The Redhunter

The title of Monday's Washington Post story on Roggio sets the tone for the rest of the article:

Bloggers, Money Now Weapons in Information War

U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage

In other words, Roggio is a propagandist, and what he does is no different than the US Military paying Iraqi TV stations to run certain stories. To the Post it's all part of a larger propaganda war, and apparently only they count as objective observers.

To be fair, they do give Roggio his due, quoting him on why he went to Iraq:

"I was disenchanted with the reporting on the war in Iraq and the greater war on terror and felt there was much to the conflict that was missed," Roggio, who is currently stationed with Marines along the Syrian border, wrote in an e-mail response to written questions. "What is often seen as an attempt at balanced reporting results in underreporting of the military's success and strategy and an overemphasis on the strategically minor success of the jihadists or insurgents."

Unfortunately, the article got many of it's facts wrong on Roggio, which he subsequently pointed out in a response posted on ThreatsWatch:

There are three problems with this article which require a response: the use iof incorrect facts which could have been easily checked; the portrayal of my embed as an information operation; and equating U.S. military information operations with al-Qaeda propaganda efforts.

Readers should go to both the Post article and Roggio's response as I cannot recap the entire debate. However, he did contact the Post writer to set the record straight:

In an email to Mr. Finer expressing my displeasure with being labeled a military information operation, Mr. Finer suggested I read the entire article. I assured him I did. The title and subtitle are not meaningless to the context of the article; it is implied I was a tool of the military, when in fact the military had no influence whatsoever in what I said from Iraq.

The details of my embed are then followed with a discussion on military information operations, the Lincoln Group’s activities in paying for positive articles to be published in Iraqi publications, and the military funding Iraqi radio stations. The implication is clear: a blogger embedding in Iraq must be part of a nefarious scheme by the military to influence the perceptions on Iraq.

The truth is far more mundane. I wasn’t paid a dime to report from Iraq by the Marines, nor was I influenced in any way in what I could or could not write about. I had full control over the where and when of my embeds. Never once was my work subject to the approval or review of the military. I wrote what I experienced, both the good and the bad.

Interviewed by Hugh Hewett on his radio show, Roggio said that in other conversations with Mr Finer, the latter said that he couldn't understand why Roggio "might be upset" with the Post article. Talk about a difference in perspectives.

Journalism in America

The other day Belmont Club posted excerpts from an opinion piece that appeared in the Louisville KY Courier-Journal last May.

In the unsigned editorial, the journalist "urges Americans to search for truth, freedom." He or she spent 10 months in Iraq, and would like to share what he believes are some "revelations" about the United States. Excerpts follow:

Lesson One: Many journalists in Iraq could not, or would not, check their nationality or their own perspective at the door.

One of the hardest things about working on this story for me personally, and as a journalist, was to set my "American self" and perspective aside. It was an ongoing challenge to listen open-mindedly to a group of people whose foundation of belief is significantly different from mine, and one I found I often strongly disagreed with.

Lesson Two: Our behavior as journalists has taught us very little. Just as in the lead up to the war in Iraq, questioning our government's decisions and claims and what it seeks to achieve is criticized as unpatriotic.

Along these lines, the other thing I found difficult was the realization that, while I was out doing what I believe is solid journalism, there were many (journalists and normal folks alike) who would question my patriotism, or wonder how I could even think hearing and relating the perspective "from the other side" was important.

Certainly, over the last three years I've had to acquire the discipline of overriding my emotional attachment to my country, and remember my sense of human values that transcend frontiers and ethnicity.

Lesson Three: To seek to understand and represent to an American audience the reasons behind the Iraqi opposition is practically treasonous.

Every one of the people involved in the resistance that we spoke to held us individually responsible for their security. If something happened to them -- never mind that they were legitimate targets for the U.S. military -- they would blame us. And kill us.

And many American journalists often refer to those attacking Americans or Iraqi troops and policemen as "terrorists." Some are indeed using terrorist tactics, but calling them "terrorists" simply shuts down any sense of need or interest to look beyond that word, to understand why indeed human beings might be willing to die in a violent struggle to achieve their goal.

Lesson Four: The gatekeepers -- by which I mean the editors, publishers and business sides of the media -- don't want their paper or their outlet to reveal that compelling narrative of why anyone would oppose the presence of American troops on their soil. Why would anyone refuse democracy? Why would anyone not want the helping hand of America in overthrowing their terrible dictator?

Wouldn't we as women be joining with them in any way we could? Wouldn't the divisions between us -- how we feel about President Bush, whether we're Republican or Democrat -- be put aside as we resisted a common enemy?

Lesson Five: What it's like to be afraid of your own country.

Once the story was finished and set to come out on the street, I was rushing back to the States -- mostly because we could no longer work once the story was published -- and I found I was scared returning to my own country. And that was an amazingly strange and awful feeling to have.

We need to begin to be able to look again at our government, our leadership and ourselves critically.

Unbelieveable.

The Courier-Journal piece contains so much moral relativism, is just so...horrible, that to disect it is not even necessary. It is almost at the level of self-parody, a caricature of the most gross and insulting sort. Yet somebody wrote it, a reporter hoping to influence our opinion of the war in Iraq.

To be sure, it would be an error to automatically assign the views of the Courier-Journal reporter to all journalists, including Mr Finer at the Washington Post. Yet who can really doubt that such thinking is all too common among members of the Fourth Estate?

And this is exactly why people such as Bill Roggio and Michael Yon are so valuable. While I would never issue a blanket statement like "you can never trust anything in the mainstream media", I will certainly say that between Bill Roggio and the Washington Post, Roggio is the real journalist. And he stands tall indeed.