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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
If you go back and look at American military operations beginning with the Grenada invasion and including Panama, the Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and you study what U.S. military spokesmen said about how those conflicts were going at each stage, you’ll see that they were right, and that they told the truth, by and large. No doubt they made some mistakes, but there was nothing like the large deceptions and misrepresentations that made so many journalistic careers in Vietnam. The military learned its lesson in Vietnam, and it has not behaved that way since. You’d think journalists would have noticed. They haven’t, but it’s not too late: When retired General Jay Garner or his successor says that things will work out in post-war Iraq, it might be wise for Western journalists to wait more than a month to declare him wrong.

The American Media in Wartime - Brit Hume
Quite.

But on the record as Hume cites it, "objective" journalists define themselves by the premise that there must be something seriously wrong with America's fundamental premises, and hence with conservative Americans.

Since that is indistinguishable from the premise of the typical liberal politician, it is unsurprising that there is a revolving door (poster boy George Stephanopolis) between "objective" journalist and liberal, but emphatically not conservative, political operative.

Hence "objective journalist" unambiguously belongs in scare quotes, and an explicitly conservative perspective is a clearer view of history than the so-called "objective" perspective.

. . . and why I treat "objective journalism" as a commercial for a product I wouldn't buy . . .+


226 posted on 06/03/2003 7:28:55 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Instead of programs that reflected old-fashioned British virtues (like common sense), the World Service adopted an all-news-and-analysis format meant to reflect modern British values — things like "oneness" and tolerance and, lately, a disdain for all things formerly British, like an instinctive trust in the Atlantic alliance.

Normally, news-oriented programming at a time when British and Americans are involved in a war would be welcome. But the World Service's revision of focus also coincided unhappily with a key decision announced early in March, as events in Iraq grew hot, by the BBC's controller of editorial policy, Stephen Whittle. It was Whittle's wish that corporation broadcasts specifically reflect antiwar opinion. Imposing a point of view on events before they unfold is a bit audacious. But it was done, and as a result, the Whittle Rule had far-reaching, although not perhaps unintended, consequences.

Notes from the Previous War: Bizarro Broadcasting Company [BBC].
But of course the truth is that journalism's superficial complaining is exactly such a point of view, systematically imposed on the reporting of events.

Imposing a point of view on events before they unfold is "a bit audacious" only in the sense thay you are likely to look foolish if the blinkered reporting that results iscompared retrospecitvely with the actual flow of events. Consequently it is the general policy of the journalist never to engage in a discussion which threatens to make that comparison too directly and too publicly.


237 posted on 07/30/2003 6:06:56 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The everyday blessings of God are great--they just don't make "good copy.")
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