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Embedded reporter comes away from front lines torn
Boston Globe
| 4/22/2003
| Scott Bernard Nelson
Posted on 04/23/2003 10:10:37 AM PDT by LavaDog
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To: LavaDog
How can reality be tainted?
81
posted on
04/23/2003 12:43:10 PM PDT
by
alisasny
To: LavaDog
Did we sell our souls as journalists for access to the death and destruction at the front lines? A morally lost person: when you describe an event from a more informed position, you do not necessarily sell your soul (that is optional).
Moreover, as most journalists nowadays, he has an overly elevated sense of importance: who expected him to report, while embedded, on the pros and cons of war, analyze our strategy, or critique diplomacy?
He was embedded with the troops and was supposed to report what he saw. And from the trench you see nothing strategic at all: you see details, individual people and machinary. That's all. JUst write what you see --- honestly and completely. Leave it to us to integrate this information.
This idiot thinks that, since he did not interview Iraqi soldiers before thet died, he lost objectivity.
82
posted on
04/23/2003 12:48:03 PM PDT
by
TopQuark
To: sean327
Back atcha Sean.
83
posted on
04/23/2003 12:49:31 PM PDT
by
Lee Heggy
(Spare yet effective and surprisingly well-coloured.)
To: Stone Mountain
Pansy huh? I take it your wartime experiences are more heroic?You are correct sir! In fact, my post in that thread says as much.
I will take my drubbing however for parroting the overwhelming opinion in that thread.
To: dd5339; cavtrooper21
poing
85
posted on
04/23/2003 2:08:12 PM PDT
by
Vic3O3
(Jeremiah 31:16-17 (KJV))
To: RonF
"O.K., Dan, now let's suppose that you were walking in the middle of the group of soldiers when you looked up and saw the snipers before anyone else did. Now what do you do?" In reply #57, Sloth corrected my reporter error. It was Mike Wallace.
I think the general at the table commented something to that effect. It was a great exchange.
To: Lance Romance
Not only that, but I remember the guy from 60 Minutes (Mike Wallace) saying that if he were in a foxhole and he saw an ambush of the USA forces was about to take place, he would not warn our forces. He would just report the story.
I believe this embed process has raised up a whole new generation of reporters who see the reality of life - unlike the Mike Wallace's of the world who only see "the glory of the story". Thank GOD the Mike Wallace's of the world are dying off.
87
posted on
04/23/2003 4:02:00 PM PDT
by
CyberAnt
( America - You Are The Greatest!!)
To: LavaDog
bump
To: Mr. Lucky
This young man's rather full of himself, isn't he?
Yes...and his lack of "staying power" is obvious by the last paragraph.
89
posted on
04/23/2003 4:20:30 PM PDT
by
ErnBatavia
(Bumperootus!)
To: LavaDog
Media REMF. What irony. LOL
90
posted on
04/23/2003 4:20:39 PM PDT
by
verity
(I never met an FSO I liked.)
To: Mr. Lucky
"This young man's rather full of himself, isn't he?"
And he admits it:
"I found myself scoffing at the rear-echelon soldiers for how little they knew about war. About the real war, the one I had experienced, with enemy AK-47 rounds buzzing over your head and the smell of burning flesh and metal filling your nose. About enduring four weeks on the front lines, sleeping in open foxholes you'd dug to avoid shrapnel in the night. About looking terrible, smelling worse, and seeing people die.
Where were the headquarters Johnnies then, I smugly asked myself this week as I walked the former headquarters of the Iraqi secret police, now home to the US Marines' First Division. Probably drinking coffee, eating hot meals, sleeping on cots in canvas tents, and moving arrows around on wall maps.
My line of reasoning was patently ridiculous, of course. The men and women who wear the uniforms are professional soldiers; I'm a professional reporter. And not a particularly brave one, at that."
But if you think about it, anyone who is part of a group that shot its way from the Gulf to Baghdad in three weeks has earned some measure of right to be full of himself. Brave or not, full of himself or not, he took the same risks as the soldiers he was traveling with. So, I say yeah, he's full of himself, but cut him a little slack, because you would have to be Albert Schweitzer not to be a little full of yourself after that.
He has learned from this exercise. With luck he will no longer be reflexively hostile to the American military.
91
posted on
04/23/2003 4:23:16 PM PDT
by
No Truce With Kings
(The opinions expressed are mine! Mine! MINE! All Mine!)
To: Mrs. P
Most were not American and often violated rules to get killed.
To: WOSG
He shouldn't be second-guessing himself. I am dogmatic about the need for journalists to be objective, btw. But, Quite frankly, by reporting on the war from the frontlines, that creates a pro-war perspective by itself and it is not necessarily wrong since you can't avoid it...it comes with being in the midst of battle.
The objecive, "here is what is happening pro and con" reports should be left to the writers in the newsrooms back home.
To: LavaDog
The shockwaves emanating from the whole "embedded reporters" experiment are still echoing throughout the insular world of journalism. They came to see things through the grunt's viewpoint--which would be a good thing, except they started seeing things exclusively that way--which is very bad for a journalist. Maybe they will take a minute to think about how strong an effect the embedding had on them--and how they are effected by similar things on the domestic side. How they are "embedded" in the teachers unions' rectums, how enjoying access to certain politicians can make them more favorably disposed to those same politicians and effect their writing (like Dubya before the election), how they more often "embed" themselves in their imaginations in the role of environmental crusader instead of businessman--and how that slants their writing. But I doubt they will learn much from this, except "embedding with the US military is bad, because we write pro-US stories."
94
posted on
04/23/2003 4:40:16 PM PDT
by
xm177e2
(Stalinists, Maoists, Ba'athists, Pacifists: Why are they always on the same side?)
To: LavaDog
Embedding was the most brilliant idea to come out of any administration...EVER!
Torie Clark is a GENIUS!!!
After the never-ending complaining and kvetching about "No Press Access" in the past couple of wars, I absolutely love reading these stories of "conflict" and struggle because every one of these reporters absolutely fell in love with the military.
I can't wait for the first cafeteria brawl when some smug lefty puts down the military or the war to one of these guys.
95
posted on
04/23/2003 4:49:51 PM PDT
by
Deb
(Democrats stole my green sweater.)
To: LavaDog
To reporter..........it's not stockholm syndrome you idiot!
It's Esprit d'Corps.
96
posted on
04/23/2003 5:31:16 PM PDT
by
tet68
(Jeremiah 51:24 ..."..Before your eyes I will repay Babylon for all the wrong they have done in Zion")
To: LavaDog
As part of a first-ever war correspondents' partnership between the Department of Defense and media organizations, we reporters signed contracts limiting what we would say and when we would say it. In return, for the duration of the conflict the Pentagon let us eat, sleep, travel - and sometimes die - with the military forces we covered. (More than a dozen journalists died in combat.)
Note to reporter, look up Pyle Ernie and WW II.
97
posted on
04/23/2003 5:35:31 PM PDT
by
tet68
(Jeremiah 51:24 ..."..Before your eyes I will repay Babylon for all the wrong they have done in Zion")
To: rwfromkansas
"But, Quite frankly, by reporting on the war from the frontlines, that creates a pro-war perspective by itself"
not sure about that ... I think honest reporting from the front lines during WWI would have created a sense of the uselesness of military action. thousands of lives for a few yards of dirt?
I think factual reporting ends up showing up the good guys, which is what USA is in this case.
98
posted on
04/23/2003 6:19:37 PM PDT
by
WOSG
(All Hail The Free Republic of Iraq! God Bless our Troops!)
To: Mr. Lucky
He's from Boston...
99
posted on
04/23/2003 6:34:17 PM PDT
by
sit-rep
Comment #100 Removed by Moderator
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