Media bias watch
Instapundit takes on the critics of media critics:
"...It's revealing, isn't it, that by the professional standards of American journalism, groveling to Saddam was widespread and seen as barely worth reporting, while even the possibility that someone might write something favorable about the United States is seen as an appalling breach of accepted practices.
"But the reporting has been bad, and it has been biased. Independent reports from all sorts of people -- touring musicians, federal judges (two of them!), various military bloggers, returning troops, Democratic members of Congress (here, too), and even journalists, have indicated that we've been getting an unbalanced picture. But it's 'groveling' to admit that?
"Only to a press that believes that it has a monopoly on truth, and a position in society that places it above criticism."
It is the responsibility of reporters to put facts in perspective. The problem with reporting from Iraq is that the media has a really warpped perspective. Deaths of US forces whould be reported, but there is a perspective that is missing. If every death is reported as a failure of US policy, that is not only wrong, but is a gift to enemies of the US. For a little perspective consider the average weekly death toll during the height of the Vietnam war compared to the total casualties in Iraq. In the first major battle involving US troops in Vietnam the US forces were engaged with an enemy force that was consderably larger and dug into its base camp. In Irag there are no large enemy units. If there were such units in Iraq, the US forces would find them and destroy them. The reporting lacks this perspective.
Now if your perspective is that the US should not have liberated Iraq to begin with, any bad thing that happens is support for your point of view, but it is not consistent with historical perspective. It says something about the journalist defending this lack of perspective that they are not willing to look at events in the perspective of US policy. Just like the Dems and reporters who have created the "imment threat" myth in the prewar debate, they are people who hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest. Like Simon and Garfunkels boxer they will ultimately be losers too.
Instapundit takes on the critics of media critics:
"...It's revealing, isn't it, that by the professional standards of American journalism, groveling to Saddam was widespread and seen as barely worth reporting, while even the possibility that someone might write something favorable about the United States is seen as an appalling breach of accepted practices.
"But the reporting has been bad, and it has been biased. Independent reports from all sorts of people -- touring musicians, federal judges (two of them!), various military bloggers, returning troops, Democratic members of Congress (here, too), and even journalists, have indicated that we've been getting an unbalanced picture. But it's 'groveling' to admit that?
"Only to a press that believes that it has a monopoly on truth, and a position in society that places it above criticism."
It is the responsibility of reporters to put facts in perspective. The problem with reporting from Iraq is that the media has a really warpped perspective. Deaths of US forces whould be reported, but there is a perspective that is missing. If every death is reported as a failure of US policy, that is not only wrong, but is a gift to enemies of the US. For a little perspective consider the average weekly death toll during the height of the Vietnam war compared to the total casualties in Iraq. In the first major battle involving US troops in Vietnam the US forces were engaged with an enemy force that was consderably larger and dug into its base camp. In Irag there are no large enemy units. If there were such units in Iraq, the US forces would find them and destroy them. The reporting lacks this perspective.
Now if your perspective is that the US should not have liberated Iraq to begin with, any bad thing that happens is support for your point of view, but it is not consistent with historical perspective. It says something about the journalist defending this lack of perspective that they are not willing to look at events in the perspective of US policy. Just like the Dems and reporters who have created the "imment threat" myth in the prewar debate, they are people who hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest. Like Simon and Garfunkels boxer they will ultimately be losers too.
Comments
Post a Comment