[antimedia] antimedia: Bruce Kesler made an excellent point....

[Email subscription to blog articles]

Posted by antimedia:
Bruce Kesler made an excellent point....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1168808383.shtml


   .... the other day when he [1]highlighted the hypocrisy of the media
   (and others) holding our troops to an impossible standard while
   refusing themselves to adhere to any standards at all.

     Those who argue that strict rules of engagement for our military
     forces are necessary to counterinsurgency, not to mention our core
     values, even when it means losing on the battlefield, have not
     applied near as much scrutiny to the rules of engagement by our
     major media.
     The âfog of warâ or âwar is hellâ defenses of troops at the front
     are dismissed by war opponents or armchair purists, but the same
     and worse is accepted from the major media. Yet, the major media
     operate under many similar foggy impediments but have chosen to be
     safer in the near and far rear, so they actually have less defense.

   The media routinely provides "corrections" to stories when the initial
   reports are in error. Sometimes the media even has to be coaxed,
   prodded and embarrassed before they admit their mistakes. Yet when the
   military provides corrections to their reports the media labels the
   previous reports as "cover-ups".
   The media also insists that they cannot trust the government reports,
   so they cannot use them. Yet they accept reports from insurgents
   acting as "reporters" without even questioning their sources. During
   Vietnam, we now know, the media was fed "news" directly from North
   Vietnamese military officers acting as reporters. They never bothered
   to question them. In fact they believed those reports much more
   willingly than they did the US military reports. The resultant news
   stories discouraged the nation and convinced them that Vietnam was a
   lost cause.
   If our nation is to survive, something must be done about the media.
   To make intelligent decisions, our citizens need a corrective source
   from which they can vet the veracity of what the media is telling
   them. Only by understanding the biases of a source can we accurately
   gauge the truthfulness of their dialog.
   For all its faults and failures, the blogosphere provides a corrective
   narrative that allows the reader to weigh the particulars of a story
   and decide where the truth may lie. Without it, we would have already
   lost Iraq.

References

   1. http://www.democracy-project.com/archives/003063.html