In the last Gulf war, liberals complained about a lack of media
access to the front lines. In this Gulf war, they are complaining
about too much access to it.
The “embedded” reporters are “patsies,” says
Neal Gabler of Salon. “The White House certainly knew
that reporters would bond with their units and identify with
them.”
This is obviously a troubling development. We wouldn’t want
American journalists bonding with the American military who protect
them. Back in their cubicles with Gabler, these reporters could
return to the leisurely anti-military, anti-American coverage of
Vietnam yore.
Liberals usually approve of reporters getting close to their
subjects. But not in this case, because the subject is the American
military, and liberals equate good journalistic coverage of it with
knee-jerk criticism.
That embedded journalists are reporting American military
success makes them “P.R. flacks,” according to Gabler. Would it
make Gabler happier if they reported falsehoods about Iraqi
military success? What he calls “cheerleading,” others might call
telling the truth.
Gabler longs for the journalistic days of Vietnam. The “current
generation of reporters, unlike the skeptical Vietnam generation,”
he says, doesn’t “challenge the conventional wisdom.” They are
“reliably docile.”
If they only returned to their cubicles, they could provide less
“information” about the American military and more “context” and
“texture” for the war, say liberals. Liberals are back in the odd
position of complaining about too much information. We need the
“larger picture,” says Gabler, by which he means his picture.
Gabler speaks of the “rigid control of images” by the
administration. But all that means is that a small group of liberal
journalists aren’t controlling them anymore.
Liberals seek a “rigid control of images” by others liberals. It
bothers them that Americans are receiving new sources of
information without it having been filtered by liberals first.
Some liberal media columnists are even trying to tutor readers
in “understanding” information. “Readers who want to work toward
understanding by assembling their own collage of journalism from
the war can read all the better British newspapers on the Web. The
Guardian, for example, is available at www.guardian.co.uk.,” says
Los Angeles Times media columnist Tim
Rutten. San Francisco Chronicle media columnist
Jon Carroll also wants us to know that The Guardian is
“available online.” Thanks guys! Now we can finally understand the
war.
What we shouldn’t do, according to them, is watch the patriotic
pornography of Fox News, unless you like that “sort of thing,” to
use Rutten’s phrase. “In the U.S., Fox News simply has wrapped
itself in the flag and makes no effort to distinguish between its
journalism and the U.S. war effort,” says Rutten. “Fox executives
can be pleased that their approach has allowed the network to hold
the lead in cable news ratings; the rest of us can be relieved that
viewers who want that sort of thing will be too busy having their
prejudices confirmed to bother the rest of us.”
What vile creatures those Fox viewers are. How strange and
appalling that they would tune in to an American network that is
pro-American.
Rutten’s paper recently reported the horror that “hundreds of
reporters placed with combat units continue to generate largely
sympathetic stories…” That won’t do. In classic
Times form, the paper advanced its criticism of embedded
reporters through the phrase “some critics” and questions such as
“With Media in Tow, Does Objectivity Go AWOL?”
The crisis of journalists being too close to the facts has the
L.A. Times
deeply concerned. “Some critics” — read: the editors of the
Times — “say these policies raise questions about the
balance and sensitivity of wartime media coverage: How independent
are reports from journalists whose very safety depends on the
soldiers they are covering? And what stories are missing from
American television screens — such as the reaction of other
countries to the conflict and antiwar perspectives — as military
analysts describe the latest action?”
The Times found an expert, not on the front lines, to
navigate it through the crisis: “Even before it began, the
placement of reporters with troops was ‘an experiment of
unprecedented size and scope,’ said Cinny Kennard, a former CBS
correspondent who teaches journalism at USC. “I just don’t know if
it’s a good arrangement.” Kennard is “concerned about the question
of independence, suggesting that ‘a bond develops when you’re in a
situation like that. You’re talking about people who form
relationships with people who keep you alive. It’s an extraordinary
Catch-22.’”
Get journalists away from the story! They might report American
military success and find weapons of mass destruction. Above all,
they might identify with their country. We don’t need “patsies”
like that to muddy the “context” that the Gablers and Ruttens alone
can provide.
