<< ST. MOTHER BANNED? ~ MAIN ~ BENZ BE UPON HIM >>
COURAGE APPLAUDED
During a 1989 PBS forum, news anchors Mike Wallace and Peter Jennings were presented with a hypothetical scenario: if they were in a position to warn US troops of a “North Kosanese” attack, would they do so? Or would they instead simply cover the attack as a news story?
At first Jennings responded: “If I was with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans.”
Wallace countered that other reporters, including himself, “would regard it simply as another story that they are there to cover.” Jennings’ position bewildered Wallace: “I’m a little bit of a loss to understand why, because you are an American, you would not have covered that story.”
“Don’t you have a higher duty as an American citizen to do all you can to save the lives of soldiers rather than this journalistic ethic of reporting fact?” [host Charles] Ogletree asked. Without hesitating Wallace responded: “No, you don’t have higher duty… you’re a reporter.” This convinces Jennings, who concedes, “I think he’s right too, I chickened out.”
Ogletree turns to Brent Scrowcroft, now the National Security Adviser, who argues “you’re Americans first, and you’re journalists second.” Wallace is mystified by the concept, wondering “what in the world is wrong with photographing this attack by North Kosanese on American soldiers?”
Read on at the above link for Marine Corps Colonel George Connell’s dissenting view. So much for any hypothetical deal; we now have, thanks to the New York Times, an actual example of US media behaving exactly as Wallace and Jennings believe they should. LGF reports:
New York Times photographer Joao Silva was right there in the room as a member of Muqtada al-Sadr’s “Mahdi Army” tried to kill American troops.
This impressed NYT Assistant Managing Editor for Photography Michele McNally:
Right there with the Mahdi army. Incredible courage.
UPDATE. Journalist rescued:
U.S. soldiers freed a kidnapped Voice of America journalist and captured four suspected terrorists in two separate operations in Baghdad July 14, officials in Iraq reported.
Courage.
They’re not really killing American soldiers, except as a byproduct of a lucrative media event, which they are there, as professional journalists, to cover.
Both the terrorists and the journalists know their readership.
Journalists get advertiser dollars for their audience, and terrorists get political benefit.
Everybody benefits.
Actually, it did take some courage.
The US military is efficient enough so that a sniper bullet from one window is sometimes (not always alas) followed by return fire from a tank.
LGF’s line was a bit too long. The correct situation:
New York Times photographer Joao Silva was right there in the room as a member of Muqtada al-Sadr’s “Mahdi Army”
His role : a war correspondent and propaganda publicist for them. Such people are “non-combatants”, but as with all civilians serving with military forces, are subject to capture and treatment similar to that of Prisoners of War.
Treason? Well, technically, yes. Not that it will be treated as such. The boundaries are blurring, and custom is all when it comes to the Law of Armed Conflict.I think we need to modify the Rules of Engagement: Reporter of Incredible Courage = Aiming Stake.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 16 at 10:46 AM • permalinkThis beats even the LA Times spread a few years ago depicting the Palestinian “militants” who occupied the Church of the Nativity—which was the reason for many cancellations, including mine. Pali Photo Op
Of course these so called reporters would scream for help from the soldiers if they got into any kind of life threatening situation, doubtless they would think it was the soldiers highest duty to rescue fellow americans in a desperate situation, But if the situation is reversed they would stand there clicking there shutters.
They have lived in there stupid lefty media bubble for so long they have lost all sense of decency,i would love to here them explain that they hate bush, while some hooded islamic psycho stands before them sharpening his knife.
Don’t u wish you could sponser a Jihadist terror group to takeout one of the MSM buildings? Maybe the MSM- after losing a few hundred of their comrades- will figure out which side to barrack for.
Posted by Wylie Wilde on 2006 07 16 at 12:18 PM • permalinkIf this same
traitorjournalist had been shot by American soldiers defending themselves NYT headlines would have read “Soldiers targeting journalists”Revolting.
Posted by Not My Problem on 2006 07 16 at 12:24 PM • permalinkIt’s not often reported that the program for embedding reporters with US forces is still in operation—and that the big news organs are refusing to take part. One of the reasons I’ve heard for their refual is that the restrictions are too much, that they feel they’re turned into nothing more than propagandists. However, so far as I know, there’s no restriction on what they can report later, after they’re no longer embedded, because the restrictions are focused on not revealing operational details. Also, the reporters can talk about the restrictions, making it clear to their audience what kind of limits they’re operating under.
What are the limits on the reporters cooperating with the enemy? Why won’t they tell us? Will they ever reveal the details?
Why will the press cooperate with our enemies, but not our own troops?
And, finally, if one of these reporters is with an enemy group that commits a war crime, will we have the guts to prosecute them for their role?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 07 16 at 12:24 PM • permalinkWylie Wilde presents us with an opportunity. I’m fairly certain we can come up with as much cash for a one-off as Saddam did.
Seriously, I joke about some things making me want to cry here, but this treasonable “news” activity really does. Aren’t these reporters capable of any humanity or decency any more?
Latino. Yes. A circle has no beginning and a circle has no end.
Paco. It would disagree some. You have to “have it” in order to “lose it” I have never seen any objective evidence to support the former.
I guess that answers my question about how we can get all of these pictures of “minutement” running around with RPG’s before a battle. Well, I really didn’t have a question.
I don’t know about anybody else, well yeah, I do actually, but I’m getting pretty sick and tired of all these “journalists” getting such easy access to the enemy. Sez a great deal, I’m thinking. Peter Arnett anyone?
Joe Galloway is one reporter who seemed to have broken the journalistic Hipporatheric oath on neutrality (scroll down). The picture shows him carrying a camera and a machine gun. I seem to remember, he used it too.
[For your enjoyment, if you like military stuff—Click on LZ X-Ray Map 1 (2,3) in the upper left hand corner. Main page.
And I can’t help but add a link to the Rick Rescorla site. Ia Drang hero, 9/11 hero. Added bonus: spoke English with a funny accent. Sorry about going off topic.]
Tosa-Rick Rescorla’s story should be taught to all American schoolchildren, but probably never will be.
I wonder if we could claim intelligence value from any notebook or camera confiscated from “journalists” caught with the enemy. How quick do you want to bet that they claim “Freedom of the Press” in order to get their stuff back?
Jack Dunphy wrote about this in 2004 and the classic ending of the show.
“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.”
How does the idea that objectivism requires a reporter to remain neutral (it does no such thing) somehow translate to mean that they must be against their country?
While all of this is very disturbing, I find the fact that they can get away with it much more disturbing. They represent a mind-set that is prevalent, or they would all be hung up by the thumbs by now.
So DailyKos in divided between North and South now? Who do I root for?
I like the view that journalists, like terrorists, are like illegal combatants, they have no nationality and deserve no protection or special treatment from our troops. They certainly aren’t on our side. You treat them as you would local civilians, or maybe foreign intruders with no standing.
It’s not courage. It’s reckless stupidity.
I felt that way about that woman who reported for the CSMonitor. She got her cameraman and translator killed, for what? So she could traipse around covering Iraqi society with the conceit that she was above nationalities or races or religions, a kind of journalistic hyper-being, reporting for the Mars News Network on the doings of these earthlings.
Sorry. I’ll take my news from people who are on my side. If I want the other side, there’s Al Jazeera. Maybe there are vieweres who don’t care how this turns out and just sees it in purely anthropological terms, but I doubt they’re a big demographic.
#21 & 23, actually journalists are forbidden by our military to use a weapon, because this makes them “unlawful combatants”. In the midst of battle, though, some leeway can be granted to save lives, as in the case of Michael Yon. And therein lies the difference between him and the likes of Wallace and Jennings, both of them unworthy of the respect of decent people. They openly admit they would do nothing to save lives.
When I was a kid, my grandfather had a copy of Up Front which for our Aussie friends is Bill Mauldin’s book chronicling the adventures of “Willie” and “Joe” his two sad sack everyman GIs as they move through Europe in WWII. The book is a collection of Mauldin’s cartoons and his thoughts about spending time with the Army and what that life was like. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
I also have sitting on a shelf Ernie Pyle’s “War” (though I am ashamed to admit that I have never read it). So I pulled it down and started looking for an example of something that would contrast with Messr’s Wallace and Jennings. The following is from his column after the Normandy landings:
Our men were pinned down for a while, but finally they stood up and went through, and so we took that beach and accomplished our landing. We did it with every advantage on the enemy’s side and every disadvantage on ours. In the light of a couple of days of retrospection, we sit and talk and call it a miracle that our men ever got on at all or were able to stay on.
Before long it will be permitted to name the units that did it. Then you will know to whom this glory should go. They suffered casualties. And yet if you take the entire beachhead assault, including other units that had a much easier time, our casualties in driving this wedge into the continent of Europe were remarkably low-only a fraction, in fact, of what our commanders had been prepared to accept.
And these units that were so battered and went through such hell are still, right at this moment, pushing on inland without rest, their spirits high, their egotism in victory almost reaching the smart-alecky stage.
Their tails are up. “We’ve done it again,” they say. They figure that the rest of the army isn’t needed at all. Which proves that, while their judgment in this regard is bad, they certainly have the spirit that wins battles and eventually wars.
I just can’t imagine many of today’s “journalists” writing something like that.
New York Times photographer Joao Silva was right there in the room as a member of Muqtada al-Sadr’s “Mahdi Army” tried to kill American troops.
This impressed NYT Assistant Managing Editor for Photography Michele McNally:
———————-
Coulter gave the interview to George Gurley, a columnist for the New York Observer, who has interviewed Coulter in the past. During an August 2002 interview, Coulter told Gurley: “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”
Gee, ya’ know, there are days that you look at the quote from Ann Coulter and ya’ say…maybe she has a point.
FYI, on Michael Yon using a weapon whilst embedded….I recall reading that story. It happened in Mosul; here’s the story.
The part which relates to this thread is near the end, where the the XO told him never to do that again, else Yon was headed home.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 16 at 07:15 PM • permalinkWallace is certainly beneath contempt. But it appears that Joao Silva is not a US citizen (he was born in Portugal and lives in South Africa). If he’s not a US citizen, having him stand in for “an actual example of US media behaving exactly as Wallace and Jennings believe they should” seems be drawing a pretty long bow. I still think Silva and the NYT can be criticised, but not on the grounds that Silva should be an American first and journalist second (which is I what I infer you to mean).
So he’s not American. Then he can watch his own ass on the incoming; I won’t ask one private to put himself at risk for him.
Protein Wisdom has a good thread on the Times and Silva; link in Tim’s bar to the left…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 16 at 09:59 PM • permalinkIf he’s not a US citizen, having him stand in for “an actual example of US media behaving exactly as Wallace and Jennings believe they should” seems be drawing a pretty long bow.
I think Tim’s point is less about Silva’s behaviour than it is about McNally’s enthusiastic cheerleading for it, and that definitely does qualify as “US media behaving exactly as Wallace and Jennings believe they should.”
The boundries are only blurred for some.
The rest of us are quite sure where the boundries are.
Posted by trainer on 2006 07 16 at 10:40 AM • permalinkYes when it comes to criticising journalists reporting from inside Iraq and the decisions they make inside a war zone it’s important not to cross certain boundries.
Like the postcode you live in.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
Who was the sage that foresaw the U.S. needing to war against the North Kosanese? Prescient.