Posted on 12/07/2005 8:56:33 AM PST by shortstop
Rumsfeld is right about the media.
They sit like vultures waiting for something they can use to embarrass and harass our military and our country.
They are not objective, they are antagonistic.
They are not news, they are propaganda.
They are not for us, they are against us.
Those are pretty extreme things to say. But they happen to be true. The best tool the terrorists have isn’t an improvised explosive device, it’s an American reporter.
And while the terrorists are losing the war in the streets of Iraq, they are winning it in the newscasts of America. The terrorists, reporters and Democrats are an odd chorus of America bashers who see nothing good and lust after everything bad.
Again, extreme words.
But they happen to be true.
When newscast after newscast and newspaper after newspaper tells a version of events more to the liking of Islamic fundamentalists than American soldiers you know something is wrong. The simple test of whether a story advances the interests of the terrorists or the Americans shows clearly that Osama’s ace in the hole sits behind an anchor desk.
And plans the front page of the local newspaper.
In a hateful irony, an abundance of news outlets has produced an orthodoxy of content. There are not different perspectives, there are merely different presenters. The same simplistic, ignorant, arrogant, anti-American blather bubbles up in every national media product.
And if you say so you’re an idiot.
The news media is alone among American industries in its certainty and superiority. Customer feedback is disdained except as it conforms to preconceived absolutes. Regular people are quoted not to give their perspective, but to parrot the prerogative of the newscast.
It is an odd profession that claims to know better than virtually everyone else. And it is a profession where political correctness, affirmative action and internationalist liberalism are so rampant that all things American are suspect.
It is an industry biting the hand that feeds it, taking a crow bar to the established order, even if the established order is best and freest nation on earth.
“We've arrived at a strange time in this country, where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press and reported and spread around the world,” the defense secretary said. What passes for reporting is “often with little context and little scrutiny, let alone correction or accountability after the fact.”
Translation: They don’t know their heads from a hole in the ground, and everything good about our troops and nation is suspect while anything bad is shouted to the skies.
Judging by the evening news, the biggest story out of Iraq was not the toppling of a dictator and the liberation of 35 million people, but the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A soldier can build a school and not be newsworthy, but let him punch somebody and he’s on the front page.
On the American news, every American action or account is suspected, discounted and minimized. On the American news, the American military is always under a cloud of suspicion. And anchors with flag pins on their lapels seem to be waiting hungrily to hang the next GI out to dry.
In an era of saturation news coverage, we have the worst coverage of an American conflict since before the Civil War. It is shallower, less knowledgable and patently damaging to national interests.
If you doubt that, ask any GI who’s been to Afghanistan or Iraq. Ask how what’s on the TV compares to what’s real and how accurately the context and consequence of the war has been portrayed.
And ask if that combat veteran thinks American news coverage helped or hurt the war effort. Ask if it made things better or worse for Americans in battle.
Ask if it cost lives or saved lives, if it encouraged the enemy of intimidated the enemy.
The answers will all add up to one thing – the American news media is a liability to us and an asset to our enemies.
Those are strong words.
But they are true.
And decent people in the news business should do something about it. Fair minded journalists, even patriotic journalists, should rein their colleagues in.
Because the First Amendment wasn’t intended to be the knife that slit the American throat.
Good article.
bump
Customer feedback is disdained except as it conforms to preconceived absolutes. Regular people are quoted not to give their perspective, but to parrot the prerogative of the newscast.
Because the First Amendment wasn’t intended to be the knife that slit the American throat.
Wow, this is so true. Thanks for posting shortstop. I couldn't agree more.
In a declared war, these traitors could be dealt with appropriately.
See Tagline
They sit like vultures waiting for something they can use to embarrass and harass our military and our country.
They are not objective, they are antagonistic.
They are not news, they are propaganda.
They are not for us, they are against us.
Those are pretty extreme things to say. But they happen to be true.
BUMPING!
More and more, the need for restrictions on the news media are evident....sort of a 'truth in news' law.
Something that says that all non-objective news must be clearly labeled as 'opinion' and the political bent of the author shown.
Fines & penalties w/jail time for "news" that is non-objective (lies/distortions/half truths/unbalanced news/etc)
I agree.
So are Federal juries in Tampa, Florida.
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