Brent Bozell:
Young students in journalism school ought to be taught that "by their stories, you shall know them." The media reveal their opinions about the world not only in their endless pontificating verbiage, but in the topics they choose. The "news" becomes whatever floats their boat, whatever they urgently want the people to know.
It's no surprise that one thing the Left wants the people to believe is that the people who took the country to war in Iraq are not only foolishly hawkish, but tactically incompetent. Just because the people heard this ad nauseam and re-elected Team Bush anyway doesn't mean the Left will stop. Now it will no longer be Kerry and the DNC leading the charge. It will be the press.
Take the latest example. At a "town meeting" with American troops in Kuwait, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was confronted by a soldier asking why he and his buddies had to dig through landfills to find armor for their vehicles in Iraq. Oh, how the media adored this story -- Rummy Flummoxed by Grunt at the Front! -- and they all led the nightly news and front pages with it.
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Let's be clear: The reporter has a right to throw Rumsfeld an honest hardball in a press conference. The soldier, too, has the right to ask the question if invited to do so. But this reporter whispered that question into the soldier's ear. Once the soldier asked the question, it was no longer the issue of vehicle armor that was news. It was the controversy, the revolt of the rank and file confronting the commander, that drove the story. Except it was all staged by the press. And then covered up.
Armed with this new evidence exposing the staged news event, CBS chose not to update its viewers about it, while the others downplayed it. On ABC, Peter Jennings relayed it and dismissed it: "It was certainly clear from the other soldiers' reaction to the question, that better protection is a big issue." On NBC, reporter Jim Miklaszewski didn't even want to verify that Pitts fed the question: "Whoever came up with the question, it's put the debate over the safety of American troops front and center."
That's bad spin. The point of the question was not to put troop safety front and center. The point was to shoot at Rumsfeld. As one trend-watcher put it, Rumsfeld may be the Left's new John Ashcroft, the primary Cabinet punching bag.
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