The role of journalists is to present their readers/audience with the facts. Although this may sound simple, the reality is that every reporter sees events from his or her own personal angle and perspective, thereby making it necessary for the public to obtain more than a single viewpoint to get a realistic perspective of events.

There are however a number of terms or catchwords that are so commonly used in our media that they go mostly unnoticed but which nevertheless influence the recipient in a way that slants our opinion in favour of one side or another.
To use one example, governments of countries with which we have friendly relations, irrespective whether they are democracies or not, are usually referred to as 'administrations' or 'governments', while non-favoured countries have 'regimes', 'dictators', 'rulers' etc.
Other words that come to mind are that of 'freedom fighter' versus 'terrorist' or 'insurgent' as well as 'liberator' versus 'invader' or 'occupier'. The reality is however that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Insurgents, a word frequently used in reports on todays' Iraq, are defined as people rising up against established authority. However, when that authority is the result of a foreign invasion, the term 'resistance fighters' or 'freedom fighters' (liberators) may be more applicable. Unfortunately these words have become so commonplace in the media vocabulary and are applied in such a manner that public opinion is thereby influenced to support the media viewpoint, which commonly is also the viewpoint of the governing ruling class, i.e. the business class or the global corporate empire.

During the second world war, while the world fought against the evil of nazi Germany and its allies, the former were referrred to as the Axis-nations which included Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria as well as others like Croatia and Slovenia which had troops under Wehrmacht command. Recently the word 'axis' has returned to media use, as in 'axis of evil', which was supposed to link Iraq, Iran and the Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) as nations posing a threat to world peace. These axis-nations were also labelled as 'rogue' nations, together with a slate of other countries placed on George W. Bush' list of evildoers. But while the axis nations of WW2 were indeed fighting for the same cause, the axis of evil designation assigned to Iraq, Iran and the DPRK is more a figment of someones imagination, unless of course any nation opposing US policy towards their country is considered to be inherently evil.

The Axis-nations of the 2nd world war were in turn opposed by the 'Allies', consisting primarily of US, British and Soviet forces as well as troops from a number of other countries like France, Canada and others.

That brings us to the US 'allies' of todays' war in Iraq and the question may be posed if they are really allies in the same sense as this term was used in WW2 or whether they are in fact better termed 'collaborators' with the USA.

During WW2 there were those who collaborated with the German occupiers of their homeland. In most countries, if not all, these people were a small minority among the population who later, after the war, paid the price for their unfaithfulness to their motherland. And in a certain respect it is the same today. In most of the countries where governments chose to support the US invasion and occupation of Iraq only a small minority of the people supported their government's decision to do so while the large majority of people were opposed to providing support to the US aggression. The government of Spain has already paid the price for their collaboration with the US and was recently defeated while others are belatedly considering the withdrawal of their troops from Iraq in order to save their skins in upcoming elections or as a result of their own feelings of having been betrayed by the Americans. Thus the 'Allies' of the USA in Iraq, also called the 'coalition of the willing' could equally well be labeled as the 'coalition of collaborators'.

Keeping in mind the difference between news reporting, which is to be unbiased, and opinion articles, where the writer uses the words reflecting his or her opinion, it can be a revealing excercise to see how easily the two become mixed, thereby influencing the opinion of the reader, viewer or listener. In my humble opinion, public broadcasting presents the most unbiased reporting of all the major media, while privately owned media are more reflective of the opinions of the owners, the government and the global corporate media empire. It's a good thing that today more and more people obtain their information from the internet, which allows the user access to media sources from around the world.