Posted on 09/09/2007 12:45:04 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
The Inquirer: To scan the media, one might think people were starting to believe less and less in the "war on terror." When you hear that, what goes through your mind?
Robert D. Kaplan: What goes through my mind is how little our public knows about what the American military does abroad. In Iraq, in general, there isn't enough media coverage about what our troops are actually doing in tactical operations centers, in increasing bonding operations with the Iraqi people and security forces. There's altogether too much media emphasis on the tales told by those either fighting or back home and no longer fighting. The public is not conditioned to appreciate the full complexity of our actual operations in Iraq - instead, they are conditioned to feel sorry for the soldiers who are there.
As for the war on terror, it really is a global war, in the sense that we have global deployments in many countries in any given week. In Africa, we stretch from Senegal to Djibouti, and yet there is no coverage of it. None of these operations is secret. Same with our missions in places like Colombia or the Philippines - all of them fall under the rubric of the war on terror. The American public is thus being misinformed and operates in a bubble of ignorance. Off the coast of Somalia, for instance, we've been successful in helping people in Mogadishu, but you see little coverage of it. In Afghanistan, we've gone a long way toward rebuilding the cell phone system there - not covered. What we get is the car bombing or the suicide bombing on Yahoo - otherwise, nothing about Afghanistan.
It's not a right-left bias, just an "incident bias." If there's an incident, it's covered; if not, not.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Here’s a facinating and logic-oriented interview about the Iraq War. Kind of surprising to find it in this publication.
THE MSM REFUSES TO BROADCAST PRESSERS FROM IRAQ AND AFGANSTAN.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Yet no where does it say to bypass the LSM and go to FRWN for the truth,... shame.
I actually saw a pretty good show on PBS (!) that highlighted the good the U.S. military was doing in the global war on terror in the Philippines, Africa, South America, and Georgia (former USSR). It seemed to highlight how both radical Islam and the US are an a race to build alliances across the globe and how if we don’t do it, someone worse than us will.
To me, it reads like two articles. The first makes good points about military successes around the world that are not reported. I liked that article very much.
The second article said the military hasn’t done enough. I didn’t like that article as much. Who has done better? Our news industry? Our academics? National politicians? Nagin? Blanco? State Department? CIA? EPA? The military has done plenty and is unsurpassed and unequaled in Government. It performs best and does so under the worst circumstances.
The way I understood it, it didn’t so much say that the military wasn’t doing enough, but could have done better. And there were mistakes made. But even then, it’s more positive than negative.
It's not a right-left bias, just an "incident bias." If there's an incident, it's covered; if not, not.
Half the truth is often a great lie. - Benjamin FranklinIf "incidents" which represent failures of those who are responsible for getting things done are reported to the exclusion of successes of those executives, an "incident bias" is a left bias.
The “news” media never publish how many bad guys have been
killed in these episodes in Iraq, onnly the U.S. body count.
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