Originally Posted by
retired guy
I wish that even after now admitting that it was a missile strike, they would not still try and introduce an element of justification . . .
That's pretty much what responsible parties and their national media tend to do.
In the wake of the shootdown of Iran Air 655, a political scientist at George Washington University published a study* comparing US media coverage of the Soviet shootdown of KAL 007 with the Vincennes' downing of the Iranian flight. He found that in the case of KAL, "the angle taken by the US media emphasized the moral bankruptcy and guilt of the perpetrating nation. With Iran Air 655, the frame de-emphasised guilt and focused on the complex problems of operating military high technology." It's a pretty interesting piece of research.
* Robert M Entman, ‘Framing US coverage of international news: Contrasts in narratives of the KAL and Iran Air incidents’ in
Journal of Communication, vol 41, no 4, Washington DC, December 1991.
Newsweek covers related to the two incidents:
This past summer, Le Monde Diplomatique ran an article that seems on-point in relation to this discussion and citing the above-referenced study*:
US and Iran, Short Memories