Posted on 06/28/2006 7:03:20 AM PDT by Herosmith
Simple Bush hatred? Certainly it is an element.
An East Coast, effete liberalism that considers legal governmental oversight as dangerous, and maybe more so than al Qaeda? Absolutely.
Latent, reflexive anti-Americanism? Yes.
But at root, it is a hubris that somehow, the job of the press to report information is on an equal footing with the obligation of government to protect us from our enemies.
Which brings me to a telling installment of the great PBS series, Ethics in America, as recounted by Jack Dunphy:
Nowhere was this mindset more vividly displayed than in a 1987 installment of the series Ethics in America, hosted by the late Fred Friendly, former president of CBS News. Each program in the series featured a moderator and panel of experts discussing ethical issues in business, medicine, or what have you, and the topic in one episode was ethics in the military. Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree was the moderator, and among the well-known panelists were retired General William Westmoreland and media heavyweights Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace. (Hadley Arkes wrote about the series in the June 16, 1989, issue of National Review. The series is available on video here.)
Ogletree asked the panel to imagine a war between the hypothetical countries of North and South Kosan. The United States was backing South Kosan, and indeed American troops were deployed in the field alongside South Kosanese forces. The North Kosanese offered to allow Jennings and a crew to film them behind their lines. Would Jennings go? Of course, he answered.
Then Ogletree introduced the ethical dilemma: While filming the North Kosanese, you see they are setting up an ambush for an approaching column of American and South Kosanese soldiers. What do you do? Would you stand by and film as the North Kosanese opened fire on the Americans?
Jennings pondered the question. "Well, I guess I wouldn't," he said finally. "I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans." He went on to say he would warn the Americans even if it meant losing the story, even if it meant losing his life.
But this admirable display of patriotic duty was short-lived, for he was then upbraided by Mike Wallace.
"I think some other reporters would have a different reaction," Wallace said. "They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover." Wallace was "astonished" at Jennings's answer, and he began to lecture him as he would an errant schoolchild.
"You're a reporter," Wallace scolded. "I'm a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you're an American, you would not have covered that story."
Didn't Jennings have a higher duty, Ogletree asked Wallace, than to roll film as American soldiers were being shot? "No," Wallace said. "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!"
Properly chastened, Jennings backed down. "I chickened out," he said. He had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached from the story.
After more interplay between the newsmen (the sage and the cub), Ogletree turned to another panelist, George M. Connell, a Marine Corps colonel in full uniform.
Connell looked at Wallace and Jennings as he might a pair of stains on his dress blues. "I have utter contempt," he said. "Two days later they're both walking off my hilltop, two hundred yards away and they get ambushed. And they're lying there wounded. And they're going to expect I'm going to send Marines up there to get them. They're just journalists. They're not Americans."
"Oh, we'll do it," Connell continued, "and that's what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get a couple of journalists."
There was complete silence all around. Even Ogletree was at a loss. Finally Newt Gingrich, then a junior congressman, summed it up perfectly. "The military," he said, "has done a vastly better job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have."
"You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!"
They actually believe this shit. Life is just another episode of Lou Grant.
The Slimes' cohorts in the international media cause a fuss that makes the foreign government less likely to assist.
The MSM feels they have a calling from God rather than a job. They're wrong. It's a job -- And it's one they've disgraced
Here's the answer: Unmitigated arrogance. Pure and simple.
They take what amounts to insider information and make a profit on it. I doubt there is much more to it than that.
Thank you for your post. I believe that every American (and especially every journalism student) should read "Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington." The author, Peteer Braestrup, chronicles the moment in time when American journalism went bad. And it has never recovered.
Simple. "Hurt Bush."
Subtext: "Avenge Clinton."
Sub-subtiext: "Rationalize support for Clinton."
(copy from powerline blog)
Here is the September 24, 2001 New York Times editorial ("Finances of Terror") (access limited to TimesSelect):
Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists.
The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies.
Osama bin Laden originally rose to prominence because his inherited fortune allowed him to bankroll Arab volunteers fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Since then, he has acquired funds from a panoply of Islamic charities and illegal and legal businesses, including export-import and commodity trading firms, and is estimated to have as much as $300 million at his disposal.
Some of these businesses move funds through major commercial banks that lack the procedures to monitor such transactions properly. Locally, terrorists can utilize tiny unregulated storefront financial centers, including what are known as hawala banks, which people in South Asian immigrant communities in the United States and other Western countries use to transfer money abroad. Though some smaller financial transactions are likely to slip through undetected even after new rules are in place, much of the financing needed for major attacks could dry up.
Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be accompanied by strong sanctions against doing business with financial institutions based in these nations. The Bush administration initially opposed such measures. But after the events of Sept. 11, it appears ready to embrace them.
The Treasury Department also needs new domestic legal weapons to crack down on money laundering by terrorists. The new laws should mandate the identification of all account owners, prohibit transactions with "shell banks" that have no physical premises and require closer monitoring of accounts coming from countries with lax banking laws. Prosecutors, meanwhile, should be able to freeze more easily the assets of suspected terrorists. The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold hearings this week on a bill providing for such measures. It should be approved and signed into law by President Bush.
New regulations requiring money service businesses like the hawala banks to register and imposing criminal penalties on those that do not are scheduled to come into force late next year. The effective date should be moved up to this fall, and rules should be strictly enforced the moment they take effect. If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F6071EFF3F5E0C778EDDA00894D9404482
Another Mike Wallace oldie but goodie....He is still PROUD that he was resposible for Anwar Sadat's ASSASSINATION!!! POS.
Christian HATER!!
The irony is that Peter Jennings, a Canadian, had to be badgered into the default anti-American stance by an American. (I believe Jennings didn't become an American citizen until years later.)
I could believe that were it not that most of them are atheists.
Only "journalists" could make lawyers and congress seem ethical and honorable!
That is an amazing clip from the PBS show. Amazing. Disgusting. Contempt indeed. My cousin was a reporter. When you dig deep, you find she has NO opinions of her own!! Amazing. She is at least 50. And she acts like it is a high and noble thing, to have no opinions, like she is above us rabble. I asked her sister about it, and she said, 'Oh, yes, she thinks of herself as a REPORTER, above it all.'
The NYTimes has been acting as if they are the fourth branch of (elected) government in all this, on equal footing with the Senate. It is disgusting.
They actually believe this shit. Life is just another episode of Lou Grant.
At its heart, this problem is one of extreme arrogance. The press & media have, by and large, the attitude that they know what is best for this country and the world - and they do their level best to shade, under-report, fail to report or just outright lie to the "unwashed masses" to achieve their goals. They think that they should be running this country and the world, because they are so "ethical" and so much more intelligent than the rest of us (and especially Chimpy McBush-Hitler, the focus of all Evil and Stupidity on the planet).
You will see the arrogance of the press, especially the Old Gray Whore, in the coming weeks and months. The reporters and editors responsible for blowing the cover of our terrorist financial monitoring program will be asked by the Justice Dept., as part of its criminal investigation into the leaks which allowed this story to be run, to disclose the names of their sources. I predict that they will refuse, and will go to jail to protect what they claim to be "freedom of the press." The ironic thing about that action and attitude is that it will demonstrate that they value the secrets of their own paper more than the secrets of the US Government, which are aimed at protecting 300 million Americans (including these traitorous Bozos).
I've got to tell you, if I were in the armed forces and some of my people were killed because an American citizen reporter failed to warm my unit of the attack, I'd not lift a finger to save them - from the enemy or my own men.
For you, is a Christian HATER one who:
1. Hates Christians
or,
2. Is a Christian, but hates another?
The second one would be oxymorinically redundant and repetative in an ironical way, maybe?
oh well back to my nap
How was Mike Wallace responsible for Sadat's assassination? That is reprehensible. Esp that he is proud.
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