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NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS
The Boston Herald’s Jules Crittenden on the release of Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig and journalism in war zones:
My profession is an easy one to kick around. It isn’t brain surgery: going places, asking questions, taking pictures, writing it up, broadcasting it. There are some skills. There are some things you have to learn. But it isn’t hard for anyone, looking at what we do, to say, “I could do that.”
Nor is it difficult for anyone, looking at the mistakes we make or the assumptions and biases that color our reports, to say, “I could do that better. That guy’s an idiot.” Whether you work at the New York Times, CNN, the Boston Herald or the Fox News Channel, you are guaranteed to make someone angry almost every time you tap a key or open your mouth. It is part of the job. You will be reviled. You can never win.
There are some other things that go with the job.
Read on.
” You are guaranteed to make someone angry almost every time you tap a key or open your mouth”.
Perhaps you could try practising your profession objectively, just a thought.Posted by Daniel San on 2006 08 28 at 10:22 AM • permalink” You are guaranteed to make someone angry almost every time you tap a key or open your mouth”.
Perhaps you could try practising your profession objectively, just a thought.Even so, the statement holds. But I’ve often wondered at the mindset of those who voluntarily enter a danger zone just to get a story. Since I don’t understand, I guess that explains why I never could have been a journalist.
Daniel San,
Perhaps you could try practising your profession objectively, just a thought.
What you or I would consider “objective” - reporting just facts and circumstances as they are without editorializing - most of the Left would vehemently disagree: in their world, journalism that does not further the Progressive agenda is objectively fascist.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 08 28 at 11:19 AM • permalinkPerhaps you could try practising your profession objectively, just a thought.
Let’s see. How about not printing faked photographs, how about not submitting to blackmail as Eason Jordan did in Iraq in order to report faux news from the source, how about looking at Peter Arnett’s obviously false reporting a little more closely, like my grandchild did, to catch his lies, how about not publishing a false “Koran flushed” story like Newsweek did, how about not permitting an obvious biased liar like Fisk to report, how about not useing “false but accurate” to justify false reporting, how abou not letting CNN off the hook when it admits letting Scumballah dictate the news it reported from Lebos, how about….on and on. We would like “objective” reporting, what we object to is outright lies posing as journalism.People just amaze me. There is no justification, none what-so-ever for any citizen of a nation at war to be fiddle farting around in the enemy’s backfield, UNLESS they are either:
1. A spy
2. An enemy propagandist.This utter bullshit about journalists being some sort of ultra transnationalist “citizen of the world” neutral due to his employment is total bullshit.
This idiocy is the product of unrestricted intellectual inbreeding within that industry.
They exist to please themselves, to do what they wish, when they wish it, for what ever bizzaro world reason they can invent.Any journalist that is a citizen of a country at war and is floating around behind the lines is a legitimate target of that enemy, by international law, for arrest, trial and punihsment, up to an including exectution, unless they are there doing the bidding of that enemy.
In that case then they are, according to international law, subject to arrest, trial and punishment, up to and including exectuion by thier own government.They are either spies or propagandists. That is reality. Everything else is deconstructionist spewage.
Unfortunately a lot of “war” correspondents now have given that clique a particularly evil-smelling name, by acting as active propagandists for the enemy- it would be like sending Wilfred Burchett out on patrol with a Tiger unit from Nui Dat.
The rot started in Vietnam- there were some reasonably objective people in the field such as Neil Davis, who let his camera do his talking; however there was also a plethora of hippy yahoos like Tim Page who were shameless opponents of the West’s involvement, and used their images and accounts to support the NVA and sway public opinion; the very same thing that is happening now, with the seeming complicity of major networks and news feeds.
Ask the average infantryman what they think of journalists, especially the ones who blow in decked out in Banana Republic urban combat cammo, hang around for ten minutes then bugger off back to their a/c compound and tip a bucket on the grunts who are protecting their pimply arses.
Crit, who has been on fire lately, is one of the good ones, clearly on the side of good. Writing from Boston (Oz folks, think Kennedy, Kerry) he is truly inside the belly of the sow.
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 08 28 at 09:47 PM • permalinkScratch a journalist today and chances are you won’t find a good old-fashioned newsman, you’ll find a crusader. Ask the typical journalism school student why this career path and the typical answer will be “I want to help change the world” or “I want to do what I can to make the world a better place”. Somewhere along the way, everyone lost the sense of what the reporter’s job is. Those who can and do remember that their job is to observe the events around them and ask questions and then report what they’ve seen and heard without embellishment or omission should continue with what they’re doing. The rest should get jobs in the social services or with do-good organizations or, perhaps, the diplomatic corps or politics. They’ll be the better off for it and so will we.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 28 at 11:01 PM • permalinkIt is about time that we started asking of journalists, in the refrain of good ol’ V.I. Lenin, “Whose side are you on…?”
Posted by Apparatchik on 2006 08 29 at 09:40 AM • permalinkI have come back to this article after reading an article by Caroline Glick today, because I want to apologize to the men we are talking about. The article is in praise of bloggers who have taken on the job of pointing out the hoaxes and mistakes and bias of the MSM, so it is worth a read on those merits alone, but in it, she writes:
At the press conference, Centanni and Wiig, who were forced by their Palestinian captors to convert to Islam, praised the Palestinians. Centanni said, “I just hope this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover this story because the Palestinian people are a very beautiful, kind-hearted and caring people that the world need[s] to know more about.” Wiig similarly praised the Palestinians.
While their remarks were covered extensively, no one seemed to think that the fact that their first post-release statements were made at a Palestinian Authority sponsored media extravaganza in Gaza was significant. No one noted that the men were flanked by Palestinian “security forces,” and stood next to Hamas terrorist leader and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
No mention was made of the fact that the two were initially kidnapped by just such PA “security officials,” or that Haniyeh is one of the leaders of one of the most fanatical jihadist organizations in the world, an organization that the majority of the “beautiful, kind-hearted and caring” Palestinians voted into office last January.
That is, no mention was made of the fact that until the two men left Gaza, they remained unfree. No one asked whether they had been given the option of not giving a press conference in Gaza. And now that they have spoken, there can be little doubt that a second press conference by the two men, in Israel or the US where no one will force them to convert to Judaism or Christianity or threaten to kill them, will draw far less media interest. After their press conference, the two men became yesterday’s news.
I won’t go into everything that I’m thinking about this, for one thing, I doubt anyone will read this, but it is important to remember that one of the problems we have with this war is with people jumping to conclusions that fit their ideas. I did this. So, whether the opinions expressed in that press conference were their own, or a script written for them, doesn’t really matter. I ignored the context of their statements and jumped to a conclusion. It just reminds me to be careful that I don’t fall into such methods of (non)thinking. It is what the enemy, and others, counts on.
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A fine, generous and wise article. People like Crittenden and his colleagues help to restore some perspective concerning a profession frquently betrayed from within by the Rathers and Mapes and Fisks of the world.