We'll Apologise When...

Quoted from a Lenin's Tomb report of a Respect[*] townhall meeting, Tariq Ali recounted an anecdote al Jazeera's chief told him:

Al Jazeera had got footage of a US tank firing at a car filled with Iraqi civilians. It was able to do so because it has eighteen reporting teams working in Iraq, and naturally enough, it broadcast the footage. The tank firing shells, the shells hitting the car. Man, woman, children in back all disappear into a conflagration. Within hours of having shown this, the US military commander in Qatar had arrived in a car with bodyguards and backed by a row of military vehicles. He stormed into the director's office and said "you owe us an apology for showing that, you have placed our troops in danger!" So, if a news channel broadcasts evidence of US atrocities, it isn't America who should apologise, but... The director of Al Jazeera, to his credit, said he couldn't apologise for showing the news, but in fact the US army owed Al Jazeera an apology. For blowing up its headquarters in Afghanistan, and for killing its chief correspondent in Baghdad. "When you make a public apology for that, we can talk".

[*] For those not accustomed to British politics: Respect is a new British radical left/antiwar party.