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May 22, 2005
"It's Not Just Newsweek"
As Michelle Malkin says in her latest column, "It's not Just Newsweek".
Michelle rocks, of course. Her TV career has taken off, too. She guest-hosted O'Reilly (again) on Friday and did an excellent job. Of course the fact that she's awefully darn cute has nothing to do with my admiration of her. But I digress.
Back to her column:
If you want to hear an earful, ask an American soldier how he feels about our news media. You will invariably hear an outpouring of dismay and outrage over antagonistic and reckless reporting. I have stacks of letters and e-mails from soldiers and their families sharing those frustrations. During the Vietnam War, such sentiments would get packed away private hurts to be silently borne for decades.
But today the Internet has allowed soldiers on the front to disseminate their viewsbreaking through the media's entrenched anti-military bias— in unprecedented ways. In the wake of Newsweek's publication of its unsourced, mayhem-inducing, and now-retracted item about Koran desecration by U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, a sergeant in Saudi Arabia immediately responded on a blog called The Anchoress (theanchoressonline.com):
I have placed my life and the life of my fellow soldiers in danger in order to achieve a measure of the freedoms we enjoy at home for the Iraqi and Afghani people. As soldiers, we all understand that we may be asked to participate in wars (actions) that we (or our countrymen) don't agree with. The irresponsible journalism being practiced by organizations such as Newsweek, however, [is] just inexcusable. At this point, because of their actions and failure to follow up on a claim of that magnitude, they've set the process back in Afghanistan immensely…
I don't regret serving my country, not one bit, but to have everything I'm doing here undermined by irresponsible journalists leaves me disgusted and disappointed.
Here, here.
There was an airshow this weekend at Andrews Air Force Base (which is just outside of Washington DC). They hold it every year, and I've been maybe fifteen times in the past twenty years. I'd have gone yesterday or today (the weather was great so it was tempting) but I just had too much else to do. Besides the pure thrill of seeing high-performance aircraft do their stuff (which like a hockey game is quite different live than on TV) I figure it's a way to show the military that I care enough and respect what they do. The pilots love to answer your questions, too. But again here I go off on a tangent.
Who's Side Are They On?
Malkin reminds us of all the lies, distortions, and misrepresentations we've had to put up with over the past few years from the mainstream media.
The members of our military are more than just an expedient means to a titillating magazine cover or juicy scoop or Peabody Award. Too often since the "War on Terror" was declared, eager Bush-bashing journalists have forgotten that the troops are real people who face real threats and real bloodshed as a consequence of loose lips and keyboards.
She then (on her regular blog) provides links to some of the other media misrepresentations. Remember these?
We heard that the military stood by while thousands of priceless Iraqi artifacts were stolen from museums. Then, oops, it wasn't really that way.
They tried to tell us that there was this big problem with desertions. But the photo that they used wasn't of any deserters.
Eight days before our presidential election they tried to tell us the we let insurgent terrorists loot a big cache of explosives because dumb 'ol Rumsfeld didn't send enough troops to invade Iraq. It wasn't true, of course. But hey, the timing was coincence, right?
Most don't even have the decency to call the bastards what they are; TERRORISTS.
Some are even more creative, they lie outright and fabricate stories about how we are targeting journalists.
Another big-name newspaper was so eager to smear the military that it fell for fake gang-rape photos.
And don't even make me bring up that windbag from CBS.
Posted by Tom at May 22, 2005 9:25 PM
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