Well let's thank these heroes. What crap. They're falling all over themselves desparate to find some American atrocity to report. After the performance of "members of the press" during the Clinton years, it's painfully obvious to anyone that the Bush Whitehouse and Rumsfeld are an infinitely more credible and reliable source of accurate information than the NY Times, CNN or CBS.
But this does bring up an interesting point about disinformation on the Web. I recently discovered a new site called Unreliable Facts. This is an online encyclopedia of fake information hosted by a British news parody site. It's for entertainment, is clearly indicated as false and makes no effort to be construed otherwise, but you know these things will get out in emails, etc. I personally think a lot of the stuff there is funny, but is there a danger? I've gotten in the habit of visiting SNOPEs.com everytime I get an email about the latest myth, but the Web is full of incorrect info and does the potential harm (if any) outweigh the good?
Some of the "media" lies some of the time.
Much of the "media" gets the story wrong, in ways large and small, most of the time.
Some "talk radio" shows are VERY reliable as far as factual information goes.
The bottom line is that we (readers/ listeners) need to be very careful about what we believe from media sources that are incompetent, biased, or just plain stupid. (That would be most of them).
In war time, you have to have the unity so that the commander in chief can say "we must send people into harms way, where some are going to die", and the citizens must support this, 100%.
If they don't. If the citizens quibble about their sons dying in battle. Then the war is lost right there. No matter how powerful our forces may be.
The media has an actual duty in time of war to support what the government is doing. Right or wrong.
To do otherwise is national suicide.
Any attempt to turn public opinion around is in vain IMO. Me, I've had YEARS to nurture my contempt for the Fourth Estate so it'll take more than a few superfluous articles & polls to change my mind.
It seems like he's trying to defend the media as being a group of heroic professional men and women who wield the pen on our behalf however, his writing is so disjointed, and lacking in the ability to make a decided point, that he just ends up looking like one of the fools that most of us think the media is comprised of.
No; they saw a ratings bonanza and went to film it. How many of those in the media would have thrown down their microphones and video equipment to pull someone out the rubble?
I have an idea, the next time a journalist is killed in Afghanistan, let's broadcast to the whole world the locations of all the other journalists over there. It is my right to know.