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JOURNALISTS HASSLED, THREATENED
CJR’s Paul McLeary reports:
Writing on his blog Wednesday while reporting from southern Lebanon, freelance journalist and Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton, in what almost looked to be a throw-away line, relayed that “To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”
Interesting.
A copy of their passport. So what? Are they going to be used to cast a spell or something?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 07 27 at 10:57 PM • permalinkWow, that whole ‘speak truth to power’ thing sure petered out fast.
Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 07 27 at 11:04 PM • permalinkSo… how did they get copies of their passports?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 07 27 at 11:14 PM • permalinkAt a guess, Andrea, Lebanonese customs officials made a copy as they entered the country. Doubtless because elements of the Lebanonese government (if not the entire government) and Hezbollah wanted to know who the journalists were.
Sez a lot about the government there, it does.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 27 at 11:33 PM • permalink“but I’m loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”
Hassled? Party of God? Oh come on Paul, grow some stones. Do some of that journalist shit. You know, where you bravely rat out all the secrets of one side because “the people have the right to know!”
The Hezzies won’t hurt you for telling the truth, they’re just harmless agrarian reformer freedom fighters.Gosh, do journos let Israeli or US forces have copies of their passports too? Despite Eason Jordan’s claim that US forces have dliberately targeted them, they sure as heck haven’t been loathe to say too much about anything they think will be a stick in the eye of our efforts have they? Amazing what these “citizens of the world” will trade to barbarous murderers for access that they would characterize as a crushing of dissent in their “own” countries.
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 07 27 at 11:53 PM • permalinkIslamists have consistently stage-managed their media coverege, to whit:
On September 12, 2001, as the Middle East awoke to the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., Palestinians in several cities took to the streets. The celebration in Nablus, estimated at 3,000 people, was filmed by an A.P. photographer who forwarded the footage to his bureau in Jerusalem. Before it hit the wire, the photographer called his bureau again, this time sitting in the Nablus governor’s office with guns to his head. The reporter lived, but the truth did not. The A.P. was told by the Palestinian Authority that it “could not guarantee their safety” in the future unless the A.P. learned to be “more careful.” Readall:http://victorhanson.com/articles/tartakovsky011806.html
13. Sorry, that should be: oh come on Christopher… not Paul.
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 07 28 at 12:04 AM • permalinkTo see how Hizbullah deals with the foreign press read this article by Michael Totten about his experience in visiting and reporting from Hizbullah-controlled territory. As has been noted in many news stories, Hizbullah has been running a state-within-a-state and to even get near them you have to show them your passport. That is a perfect distillation of the crux of the problem in Lebanon.
Journalists are a spineless bunch of bastards, all this crap talk about speaking truth to power is just a cowards pose, the truth is they do what they can get away with, and for all there heroic bulls##t they know the islamofascists mean business, if they will kidnap,torture and kill diplomats, and high ranking politicians, they would take a journalist out no problem, the hacks know this and act accordingly.
Sorry Tim.
Unfortunately, this is nothing new.
CNN would regularly cover up Iraqi acts of brutality, murder, torture, and planned assassinations for over a decade under Saddam Hussein simply in order to maintain their Baghdad bureau. See here.
Reuters had a similar policy of cowardice.
It was mentioned as a ‘throwaway line’ because it is so common. This is why you simply cannot trust the media’s reporting of nearly anything in the Middle East.
From their lips to our ears.
This “reporter” openly admits that no “reporter” can report anything that might piss off the local murder-death cultists so therefore nothing said by any “reporter” should be accepted at face value.
This is right up there with the earlier “on air” conversation where a “reporter” said something like - we cant verify whether or not these casualties are occurring or under what circumstances they occur because the hezzbulla wont let anyone in that isn’t hezbulla. But we have it from reliable sources that these are, in fact, all innocent civilians that were purposely targeted by Israeli jets and artillery.
I wonder how the MSM is gonna cover the action when the blood debt they’ve incurred is called due?
I don’t blame reporters for being careful. They ought to be careful. What I do blame them for is the fact that they are okay-dokey with not reporting what they know to be true. They make a deals with the enemy that they won’t report anything the enemy doesn’t want reported. If they break their deal, well, let’s just say that we mustn’t lose our heads; we must do what we are told if we want to maintain our access.
I would just like to ask what is the purpose of this whole exercise? If you are a reporter, I would surmise that your purpose is to report. If the cost of access is inimical to that purpose, why bother? This just doesn’t work as an honest reason. It smells like an phony excuse to me. And they ought to be very afraid.
If you skipped the link to Totten’s latest, I will add my recommendation (for what that is worth). He’s still a bit shell shocked, I think, but Totten always has something to say worth listening to; even when I disagree with his opinions, I’ve never discovered that he lied about his facts. That alone is a breath of fresh air. Guys like he and Michael Yon are the real reporters of this war.
I’m with saltydog…I don’t demand this guy knowingly put himself in danger, but this episode does call into question why the heck we actually need journalists like him “reporting” from places such as the one he’s at right now. Not that I’m expecting the MSM to admit anytime soon that they’re mostly publishing enemy fiction. That would undermine their entire self-created image as fearless seekers of the truth, after all.
(Yes, I know CNN admitted to covering up in their reports from Saddamite Iraq, but I suspect many people still think that was an isolated incident, if they even remember it at all.)
Guys like Michael Yon have to put themselves out there because of how desperately degenerate the actual profession of journalism has become.
That profession has become a haven for filthy traitors and morons with a less than juvenile understanding of such basic issues as cause and effect.
The actual reality is that much of what is transpiring today is due to the blatant willingness of our own news media professionals to be manipulated and their consistently proven desire to side with whomever is an enemy of “the west” for any reason at all.
These idiots, morons and criminals have carried the water for the enemy for a few decades now and this is one of the reasons why the enemy has sucked up courage enough to get serious about their bid for a true global war.The blood debt owed the MSM is real.
I agree with Salty Dog and PW and would add—at what point do we decide that it just doesn’t matter what is going on in enemy territory?
I don’t think a lot of Western news bureaus from Allied countries spent time on the ground in Axis countries after war kicked off and I really don’t care if enemies are being pounded hard and suffering as a result.
Let Al Jizz, etc, report what they want. I won’t believe most of what they say and CNN, etc., aren’t a corrective so get the hell out and let the military do its job.
Local news doesn’t put a reporter in a burning building to report how hot it is inside—why is this different? Stick with the Fire Department and tell their story.
The A B C’s of the issue.
A = We’re at war
B = The stakes in this war are in the “all or nothing” category
C = There is an industry called journalism whose employees benefit from our culture.
D = These journalists have the job of keeping the rest of us informed of events during this war
E = These journalists have, at least in substantial part, gone over to the enemy’s point of view.
F = These journalists are not providing either true or accurate information to their fellow citizens.
G= These journalists are, either willingly or through sheer stupidity, assisting the efforts of the enemy.
H= ... don’t go there. Hard words. Hard thoughts. Ugly stuff. Stop at this point. A B C’s over. Too scared to proceed.The saddest of sad parts is, the unwillingness to seriously address this issue right now just might guarantee a gross over correction once the herd is truly aroused and in stampede mode.
If a body has a gangrenous limb, is it best to:
A. Remove that limb;
B. Stab at it repeatedly with a knitting needle;
C. Ignore it and hope it goes away.And for those that have themselves convinced that it really doesnt matter what the msm says or does, ask the several million south asians that died as a direct result of the last time the msm won this game..oh, you cant. They’re dead.
Also ask yourself this. Since both media talking heads and the old school terrorists have both publicly stated that the “international terrorism” that started up in the ‘70s was calculated to take advantage of the msm…where would that practice have gone if the media refused to be manipulated?
If a journalist publishes a “tell-all” book when they finish their tour-of-duty, and say “this is what i couldn’t tell you before” and drop a bucket on their former ‘minders’, then arguably it is worth it.
That would put an end to their career, because they would have turned on their source. Gotta protect the source, right?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 07 28 at 10:41 AM • permalinkI don’t want journalists to put their lives in danger just to get the latest scoop. It’s valueless anyway if it’s edited for propaganda purposes or downright untrue, so why do it? Journalists should simply be upfront about why they can’t safely report the truth among certain groups in certain areas, and let people draw their own conclusions. We don’t need up close and personal pictures of masked jihadis shooting off rockets, and we definitely don’t need the harangues of terror-loving lunatics.
call into question why the heck we actually need journalists like him “reporting” from places such as the one he’s at right now.
Because journalists ended the Vietnam War by putting gory pictures and selective stories on the evening news. These blokes want to do the same. The government should speak out more, but I do think the public is not falling for it as much.
Apparently though this bravery stops at the water’s edge, however. When it comes to telling the truth about the enemy, they’re too skeered! WHAAAAAAA!
I agree with Rebecca. Who the heck needs another so-called scoop? They are not even looking for actual news scoop, they are looking for exciting video.
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Well, now, that’s crushing of dissent.