Where is the anger?

Stephen Spruiell:

On the targeting of journalists in Iraq, Jeanne B. writes:

On "Reliable Sources" yesterday Kurtz and a panel of journalists had a long discussion about media casualties in Iraq. As you can imagine, it was quite emotional... well, except for one emotion: anger. There was no anger. Zip.

Are you, like me, struck by the absence of anger among journalists at the deliberate targeting of members of the media?

I'm surprised that whenever I see correspondents in Iraq show anger in public, it's usually directed toward conservative commentators who have criticized the media's performance. They express that anger by simplifying conservative criticism of the media down to one single slogan — "Where's the good news?" — and rebutting it with something like, "In the field of daily journalism, the violence is the breaking news. In Iraq, the security situation is the prevailing story. When the insurgents attack, it's our job to report it."

Most of the American correspondents in Iraq who report for the major news organizations believe in the journalistic principle, most infamously expressed by Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, that you do not take sides in reporting on the war. You are a "citizen of the world," as CNN's Bob Franken put it just before the invasion of Iraq, and you check your patriotism when you put on your reporter's hat. This mentality was not as pronounced during the actual march to Baghdad, when embedded journalists were watching the U.S. military do what it does best. But now that the lines aren't as clear cut, they report on the insurgency as if it were a natural disaster that the United States has helped create and has failed to control.

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After three years of passively reporting one terrorist atrocity after another, the ease with which the press has rendered its judgment on Haditha is what makes the coverage seem so disproportionate. Jeanne B. is absolutely right. Where is the anger, the righteous judgment, for the evil fanatics who are actually blowing up and kidnapping and assassinating journalists?

And they say Bush declared a war on the press.

UPDATE: Merv Benson writes:

The media have focused on the fact of enemy attacks rather than the effect. So a failed attack or an attack that focuses only on noncombatants is presented as a U.S. failure to stop the attack rather than a war crime against noncombatants... There is just a noticeable lack of interest in the wickedness of the enemy, and a fetish for fault-finding about our troops.

Left-wing bloggers like Oliver Willis miss the point. They say that conservatives wish the press had never uncovered Haditha. In fact, conservatives (at least this conservative) recognize that unless journalists had pressed the issue, the facts about Haditha might never have emerged — and that's a good thing for a lot of self-evident reasons.

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Others are noticing the problem and that is what is needed. Merv Benson, as usual, makes some good points.