Posted on 11/30/2005 11:38:43 AM PST by Fielding
THE NETWORK television newscasts and big-city papers that set the tone for most "reporting" from Iraq have done Americans a disservice by concentrating solely on the "bad news" in that country.
Worse, at least some of the skewed reporting appears to be the result of deliberate bias.
Consider a tidbit relayed by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin. The New York Times on Oct. 26 ran a story that included a vignette about a Cpl. Jeffrey Starr from the state of Washington who "died in a firefight in Ramadi on April 30 during his third tour in Iraq," four months before his enlistment was set to end.
"Sifting through Cpl. Starr's laptop computer after his death," reported the Times, "his father found a letter to be delivered to the Marine's girlfriend. 'I kind of predicted this,' Cpl. Starr wrote of his own death. 'A third time just
seemed like I'm pushing my chances.'" The Times made it appear that the Marine was resigned to his fate and frustrated to be serving a third tour in Iraq.
What the Times didn't report about this dead Marine was the very next part of his letter, which made clear his whole point was not frustration but pride:
"I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not to have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their own lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark."
Again and again, stories emerge about how the American "big media" stories are at odds with reports from troops on the ground. Conservative columnist Mona Charen reported a series of examples of media distortions from Iraq. Friendly interactions between Americans and Iraqis, she wrote, occur all day long in front of American media personnel, but the media pick up their pens or cameras only when a rare, random incident makes discord appear to be the rule.
In The Washington Post this week, Michael Hanlon of the liberal Brookings Institution wrote of "a civil-military divide in the United States over the war in Iraq." The military, including low-ranking officers, continually cites progress in Iraq's economy, water supply, schools, telephone service, and other indices -- with what Mr. Hanlon called "irrepressible optimism."
Register editor Michael Marshall, in his third trip to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, pronounced himself "cautiously optimistic" about American progress. Hospitals and railroad stations, he notes, are being steadily constructed or renovated.
Conservative columnist David Brooks wonders why the continuing victories and valor of American troops go unreported: "Despite all the amazing things people are achieving in Iraq, we don't tell their stories back here."
Of course, roadside bombings in Iraq must be reported. But Americans need to know that much of the country is safe, that the populace increasingly condemns the terrorists, that the economy is growing, and that constitutional democracy has proved popular in two elections, with a third scheduled for Dec. 15.
That these positive developments aren't widely known is an indictment of an "elite" media more interested in its anti-war story lines than in balance or accuracy.
MSM sucks!
I guess that means all our ForeFathers were nothing but a bunch of "cockeyed optimists" too!
The New York Times is not on my Christmas list. A pox on their house.
bump
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