I just can't understand why people think Reuters is biased

A Russian-made Tupolev airliner crashes in Iran, killing at least 80 people. Reuters sees an opportunity to blame America:

Air safety experts say Iran has a poor safety record with a string of crashes in recent decades, many involving Russian-made aircraft.

U.S. sanctions on the Islamic state have prevented it from buying new aircraft or spares from the West, forcing it to supplement its ageing fleet of Boeing and Airbus planes with aircraft from the former Soviet Union.

Look for much, much more of this kind of thing, if the UN actually imposes tougher sanctions on the country. (Remember, every hardship suffered by the Iraqi people after the first Gulf War was all the fault of genocidal American-led economic sanctions, not an insane dictator building palaces and mosques and paying Palestinian suicide bombers with oil money.)

If Russian aircraft manufacturers have such a poor safety record, Reuters should probably be reporting on that. But don't hold your breath.

Damian P.

Update: according to the Associated Press, 29 people were killed in the crash - horrible, but far less than originally reported. The AP story deals with the sanctions issue much more fairly than did Reuters:

Iran has frequent plane accidents and has several times blamed them on U.S. sanctions that it says make it difficult to import spare parts, even from Europe. However, it does not have similar difficulty buying parts for its Russian planes, some of whose recent crashes have been blamed on poor maintenance and other problems.

The West offered to open the door to sales of new planes and spare parts in an incentive package aimed at getting it to roll back its nuclear program.

The Tu-154, the workhorse of passenger airlines in the former Soviet Union, has been in commercial service since 1972. More than 900 have been built and more than 160 exported to airlines around the world. Due to noise and pollution regulations, the planes do not fly to Western destinations.

Posted by damian at September 1, 2006 11:49 AM