Posted on 11/17/2004 12:16:23 PM PST by dandelion
The Old Media does not understand why it cannot reach it's "audience" - they are continuously amazed at their falling numbers, and they do not understand why they are losing credibility and followers at an alarming rate. But in the story of Kevin Sites, the reporter who filmed - and condemned - a Marine shooting an insurgent in a Mosque, we find the answers illustrated vividly. It is a cautionary tale of writers and reporters whose only "audience" is themselves...
In Kevin Sites' Blog, we find accounts of war, stories of Marines at rest, and the subtle undercurrent of identification with subject. As writers, we know that in order to reach your audience, we must make them identify with our protagonist. But it is clear that if we are able to tease our audience into aligning themselves with our subjects, it is because we as writers were able to find that part of us which identifies with our subject as well. So it appeared to be happening with Mr. Sites; he was beginning to find common threads with the Marines with which he traveled - but then his "big break" happened. He found the "anti-war" images he apparently has been so long in seeking and the images are now being embraced by the Old Media as their new icon of American Brutality.
He managed to capture images that led to instant fame among his peers - and he forever identified his real audience. That audience is not the public, or the military. Rather, his audience is only other journalists.
Upon studying his writings, one finds that Kevin Sites is conflicted. But the depth of that conflict is astounding as it is disturbing...
Little Green Footballs finds this stunning confessional on Site's blog, dated Nov 18, 2003:
Betrayal - "So in some ways, embedded in this unit, I begin to feel I've betrayed the people that depend on me to be skeptical; to question the dominant powers and institutions of my nation and the actions it undertakes in the name of its citizens. I am not a military or American cheerleader, not a mouthpiece signed on to some institutional agenda whether I believe in it or not. I am here to ask the hard questions of the people who make the hardest decisions; ones that result in people dying or people being killed. I must remember as one journalist advised, "write in your notepad every day 'I am not one of them.'"
I imagine the magnificent Ernie Pyle had a different definition of betrayal, and I doubt he ever wrote "I am not one of them" in his notebook. Not one of them? "Them"? What do Journalists mean by "them"?
Do they mean Church-going America? The Military? The United States?
I think the answer is much broader - "them" is quite simply the rest of the Human Race. There are "professional journalists", and there are "them". This conflict is illustrated in his earliest entries:
March 14, 2003: "In a few minutes our food arrives. Hot platters filled with sunburned chicken cubes and steeped high with white rice, a small peak, yellow from saffron. We are about to dig in when correspondent Jane Araf pulls apart a bit of chicken with her fork. She doesn't like what she sees. I do the same. It's pink enough that I think maybe we could rub it on the outside of our bus for good luck. Jane tells the owner she would like hers cooked a bit more. I ask the same, so do the others. Our driver is now in a side room praying. The owner doesn't understand.
He thinks we don't like the food and shows us other items on the menu. I grab a platter and walk with him back into the kitchen. In the back there is rectangular charcoal pit where the meat is cooked on long metal skewers. I show him that we want the chicken put pack on the grill. A smile of recognition. "Ok, ok," he says, waving me off now, smiling. Everything is going to be ok. Until one by one, the rest of the table starts bringing their platters into the kitchen.
The cook looks angry. There's a traffic jam in the kitchen. Our driver has finished his prayers and is now horrified that we've created an international inciden"
This is an egrarious mistake that even the most green of world travellers understands - one does not complain about food that is set before you by the locals. One eats it, for it is the expression of local culture. In most cultures, one does NOT "walk back into the kitchen" and demand it be fixed a different way. It's shocking that CNN doesn't train their reporters in local customs and etiquette. And Sites is not alone in his contempt for local culture - the other reporters all file in, demanding that the locals do as bid. Their behavior is more worthy of Elitists, not world travellers. But it does not end there...
His treatment of Local Officials in Kuwait is equally appalling:
March 10, 2003: The Kuwaiti press officer stands by another field officer as I interview him. He interrupts every second question, even very innocuous ones. I end the interview in frustration. Then I attempt to speak with the U.S. Special Forces advisors. They agree as long as I don't show their faces. The press officer stops me, "You're here to show gulf forces," he tells me, "this story is about gulf forces.""Please don't tell me what my story is about," I say, "It will be about what I report not you."
Interviewing is an art, not an attack mode, and Sites is abysmal at interviewing subjects. But Sites is not alone in this - most "professional" journalists display this behavior every day with all manner of subjects. He angrily pins his inability to get answers on the interviewee, not realising that the real fault lies in his skills as interviewer. He is not "one of them", so he cannot identify with them enough to treat "them" with courtesy - his subjects are means to an end, not human beings.
What gives him meaning, then? Surprisingly, it war -
Feb. 28, 2003: Last night we spoke, as friends, as fellow correspondents. What will happen, where should we go? Race west toward the oil fields of Kirkuk. There are reports that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has rigged them with explosives. There are reports that American troops will paradrop in--secure that area first. Or should we move south, toward Baghdad. Every correspondent knows there's glory in that. We all remember, green with envy, the BBC's John Simpson marching into Kabul after the fall of the Taliban. But it seems somewhat cyncial, unforgivingly opportunistic to feed a career on carnage of war. But we do. If I'm forced to rationalize it, i'll do it like this--the motivation will make me to work harder to take more chances on the story.
The people that are here, that cover these thing are often the same faces I see wherever war is brewing or in play. It's both an avocation and an addiction. A search for moral absolutes in uncompromising violence. War corrspondent Chris Hedges explains beautifully in his book, WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING.
Here, the role of "professional" journalists is startlingly illuminated - they do not take side, they do not uphold an ideology; they are there to feed off the carnage, to soak up to blood in an attempt to gain glory for themselves and acclaim from their peers. Even if they claim to be anti-war, they are in fact pro-war. They are just anti-human, for without ideology or perceived truth war is an obscene bath of blood, nothing more than violence without meaning.
No, Mr. Sites is "not one of them" - none of the journalists are "one of them", members of this vast human race that loves, lives, fights, dies for causes, for ideals, for something outside themselves. They are jackals feeding off the gruesome remains of war.
Reading Mr. Sites blog is akin to reading the diary of one of the "popular" girls in high school - in truth, they are only popular with their small group, and they have decided that they rule the world. They are "not one of them", the larger group of humanity; they are a very small clique that detests all other forms of life. Their opinion is only important if the other girls, the "them" groups allow it to be.
So too it is with Mr. Sites, and others in his merry group of "professional" journalists. They roam a countryside joking among themselves, mocking their subjects, calling for obedience much the way the "bwanas" roamed Africa in the 19th century. Their attitudes are that of the Elite, the few; they will tell others what to do and what to think. These journalists may feel it tugging at their sleeve to come back to the human race, to join their various compatriots, to identify with a cause or an ideal. But in truth, there is no "ideal" - there is only the acceptance of their special peers and the rest of "them" do not matter.
- "Professional" journalists will not help the dying child - it might interfere with "journalists" getting a good picture of the event, so other "journalists" may congratulate the image of death playing across a child's face. Just watch the agony and wait for the Pulitzer shot...
- "Professional" journalists will not tell the true story of John Kerry's poorly run campaign - the other journalists have decided they want him for president, and they won't be happy with defectors from the clique.
- "Professional" journalists will not look for the truth of war, because they do not believe in "truth" - they will only look for what their peers will find acceptable and reward. The only reward for the "professional" journalist is the critical acclaim from his peers, other "professional" journalists...
And so we find the heart of the disconnect between the "Old" Media and their audience: there is no audience outside of the Old Media. The rest of the human race is not their audience - they are not "one of them". Rather, their audience is that small group of "professional" journalists, and that audience is the only one that matters to them.
The American People are not the audience of "professional" journalists like Kevin Sites - they are "not one of us". Their audience is themselves, the only thing they truly love.
Let us leave the "professional journalists" to themselves. We are not one of them. I wonder if they will even notice that we, the American People, have gone...
FYI, the comment's section of Sites's blog is being heavily deleted.
Dumbass Sites just not get it that the American public except for the hard core left doesn't give a damn about that terrorist that got shot
They are more concerned with what the terrorists do
Telling that he references Chris Hedges' "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning".
It's a mess of a book, and an example of what happens when a "journalist" with a few facts extrapolates huge sweeping conclusions from them. But in a nutshell, war is a force that gives Hedges meaning. And Chris Hedges is not half as interesting to the rest of us as he is to himself.
Not sure I would go so far as to refer to his "them" comment meaning the human race, but this is scary insight into Sites and his thinking. May have to check out his blog for myself.
Stop consuming old media's product. It's really that easy. They're always telling us that if we don't like what they are putting out, then turn it OFF!
What are you waiting for?
I like train wrecks.
This line says it all. It reeks of the arrogant, elitist mindset that dominates the MSM. This mindset is the reason the MSM will, from here on out, see it's influence diminish to nothing.
THEM have decided that enough is enough.
The only aspect of this Sites' affair is that no one is listening or paying attention.
The first thing I thought of when word of the Sites video was Ernie Pyle. If you read much of Pyle's stuff, he was definitely not a mouthpiece for the "administration" of the time. Military management was one of his favorite targets. But you could NEVER question where his loyalty was when it came to the guys on the ground. Excellent, moving, manly writing. Too bad he isn't emulated more in the MSM.
Question me this, fairy: How many other businesses/industries do you know that hate their customers so? (No, you can't nominate surgeons who legally get to cut open and do other perverse things to their clients.)
As far as I'm concerned, "journalist", in addition to being hideously arch (what ever happended to "reporters"?), has become a pejorative term. I have no respect for them.
Frankly, I think he is right to write "I am not one of them". That much is obvious form his attitude. However, the part that's missing is that he should then write "but I hope someday to be".
These truly are miserable human beings.
"Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoe making and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poor house."
- Mark Twain
I'm stuned speechless. Have you read this? Kevin Sites is a real piece of work. Maybe the Marine should've shot him next. I'm left wondering if the entire profession isn't lost.
Its not entirely lost, not yet.
But its close.
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