MEDIA KNEW OF IMPENDING ROADSIDE BOMB AND FILMED IT!!

News media gets tip of a roadside bomb and sets up cameras to film US soldiers being blown up when it went off.

7115 South Boundary Boulevard MacDill AFB, Fla. 33621-5101 Phone: (813) 827-5894; FAX: (813) 827-2211; DSN 651-5894 June 3, 2004 Release Number: 04-06-09

============================================= For additional information on the story see also:

Either I've been teleported interdimensionally to a world where black is white, Kirk is evil, and Spock wears a beard, or a significant occupational group has declared its colors, and they're not red, white, and blue:

MOSUL, Iraq - Coalition soldiers questioned two news media cameramen and a reporter after a roadside bomb exploded near a Coalition convoy two kilometers north of Mosul June 3.

The media, who were at the scene prior to the attack, told soldiers at the scene they had received a tip to be at that location prior to the attack and they had witnessed the explosion.

There was minimal damage to a Coalition vehicle, a cracked windshield, and no serious injuries.

3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division soldiers requested the media accompany them to a base camp in Mosul to answer questions as witnesses to the incident. The news media representatives left the base camp in the mid afternoon. [from CENTCOM's June 3 news release. Reference courtesy of Sarah at Trying To Grok.]

This is not the habitual behavior of so-called "journalists." If precedent holds, it will not get a lot of play in the Old Media. It's up to us of the New Media to spread it as far as we possibly can.

Imagine yourself in the situation described. Imagine receiving a tip, from a source you had some reason to believe, that an explosive ambush had been prepared in a particular place, and that lives were at hazard as a result. What would you do? Without reference to the identities of the bombers, their probable victims, or any other element of the tableau: what would you do?

Wouldn't elementary human decency oblige you to tell whoever might be able to avert the atrocity, and urge him to check it out? Wouldn't that be compulsory for anyone with a shred of regard for human life?

Had the above incident happened in any part of these United States, the "journalists" would be indictable as accessories before the fact to attempted murder. What will happen to them in consequence of events as reported from Iraq is anyone's guess. Mine is that they'll step away unscathed, legally and occupationally.

Legal questions to the side, how can a decent man, whatever his nationality or trade, merely watch as others hurtle into deadly peril -- a peril of which the observer could have forewarned him? What price "objectivity," "impartiality," or any other euphemism for this sort of callousness?

Will their "journalist" brethren remonstrate with them for having watched in silence? Not if recent interviews with high-line "reporters" like Mike Wallace are any indication. More likely, the Mosul miscreants will be patted on the back and lauded for having upheld the "standards" of the "profession."

Which brings me to another bit of spleen tokage: "journalists'" self-attribution of "professionalism." If there's a word in the English language that's been abused worse, I'm unaware of it -- and I'm the dictator verborum for the New York Metropolitan area.

A professional is emphatically not just a white-collar employee who draws a salary instead of an hourly wage. A professional is emphatically not just a tradesman who takes his work seriously. A professional is one who professes a code of ethics that takes precedence over his own interests. Medicine, law, and the clergy, the trades traditionally called professions, all conform to that stricture. Persons in each of those trades must swear before witnesses to a code of ethical conduct that obliges them to lay down their own lives rather than break its rules.

"Journalists," while claiming exemption from any ethical standard whatsoever in the name of "objectivity," nonetheless call themselves "professionals." The word is infinitely too good for them. Given the way they routinely deceive, distort, and suppress vital news when it suits their editorial agendas or political proclivities to do so, they aren't even honest workmen.

Some will say that "journalists" do uphold a standard of sorts: "protecting their sources." Please! That isn't an ethically based constraint; it's an attempt to retain a competitive edge over other "journalists" who don't have access to the source, and to protect the source from the consequences of any lies he might utter. It's so selfish a precept that it defies comparison to any notion ever advanced as moral or ethical.

In the name of "protecting their sources, "journalists" have spread the foulest of calumnies, ruining lives and reputations wholesale. Now, in the name of "objectivity," they're allowing other men -- American soldiers, who volunteered to take up arms and risk death in service to their country! -- to walk into harm's way unawares. They sit and watch, with cameras rolling, as the crosshairs of Islamist insurgents and terrorists settle on the chests of American men at arms.

People think lawyers are a plague upon the land. At least lawyers, though they might leave you broke, will leave you your life.

Who is teaching "journalists" that this is acceptable behavior? Is it their older mentors and role models? Is it the journalism schools and professors of communications? Or is it We The People, by consuming their product in blissful disregard for the poisons in the recipe?

If this is the way "journalists" regard their occupational obligations and perquisites, they're as dangerous to our men at arms as the weapons of the enemy, and should be treated as such.

141 posted on 06/09/2004 6:25:50 AM PDT by dd5339 ("We came to change a nation, instead we changed the world" President Reagan.)

...and the media whines and B1tches when one of theirs accidentally gets hit by our soldiers weapons fire...

If this story is true, there's gonna be a big increase in 'friendly fire' incidents among the media...

Oh, Please, do you think it was the Ice Cream Man who called and said to set up a camera to see Americans get blown up??

Alright, enough of this.

Please show me where in the article, the website or CENTCOM's release that:

1. The "tip" specified an attack was going to take place and

2. The media was alerted to this specific attack.

This is hype and hysteria. But please, if I am reading this wrong, then show me where it spells it out, I am probably overlooking it.

It's bad enough the media is as corrupt as they are without making stuff up about them. One lie on our part about the media will overshadow ALL the lies the media produces.

I should add:

I am not saying the media didn't know of the attacks beforehand; it is that palaceofreasons source and the CENTCOM release does not reveal this.

I would love it if it turns out these creeps knew and we can try them for being an accomplice or accessory. But from what I read, it ain't there. We need other info, I hope we get it.

No, I am pretty sure the press has decided its color is red.

If you mean the western press, yes. The Middle Eastern press is another matter, for the most part.

146 posted on 06/09/2004 5:47:06 PM PDT by El Gato (Federal Judges can twist the Constitution into anything.. Or so they think.)

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