Posted on 12/10/2004 5:01:20 PM PST by rocksblues
NEW YORK In a front-page note to readers this morning, Tom Griscom, editor and publisher of the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press, quoted a local military spokesman and a top ethicist in defending his reporter Edward Lee Pitts, who prompted a U.S. soldier to put a challenging question to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on Wednesday.
He also quoted from an email from Pitts: “It is amazing these guys are defending freedom but don't want free speech in their own country."
Griscom admitted that, in hindsight, “information on how the question was framed should have been included” in the reporter's story about the controversial incident. But he added: “Mr. Pitts used the tools available to him as a journalist to report on a story that has been and remains important to members of the 278th [National Guard unit] and those back at home.”
He quoted Sgt. Randy Harris, of the Tennessee Military Department, saying, “Regardless of where the question came from, it is a legitimate concern. The soldier that asked the question was earnest in asking. I think he was very truthful in the way he asked the question.”
The question by Specialist Thomas Wilson, put to Rumsfeld at a town hall meeting in Kuwait, had to do with lack of enough armored vehicles in Iraq.
Griscom, who once served as director of communications in the Reagan White House, quoted an email from Pitts stating he believes “lives are at stake with so many soldiers going across the border behind scrap metal.” Pitts added, “It is amazing these guys are defending freedom but don't want free speech in their own country. I was impressed that [Rumsfeld] was willing to take the tough questions from the soldiers.”
Pitts had written major stories about this same issue recently for the paper.
Griscom also quoted Bob Steele, an ethicist with the Poynter Institute, who said, “Lee Pitts used some enterprise in how he went about getting that question on the table. From an ethical standpoint, he certainly needed to be honest with the soldiers about what he was doing, that he wanted them to ask his question. My impression is that is what he did. I don't see any form of deceit in what he did.”
Publisher/editor Griscom added: “While Mr. Pitts states that he discussed the armor question with the soldiers, Spc. Wilson chose to ask the question.”
Sorry, I don't know any honest "ethicists" who support someone being a sock puppet for a Leftist with an avowed anti-military and anti-American agenda.
Another journalist clown in the same class as Kevin Sites. Put the embeds on a plane and send them home.
Surely the press has a picture of the vehicle described in the question...with 'rusty scrap metal' and 'broken ballistic glass'...right?
Pitts mentioned the units' delay in being able to attend the Q&A session, but failed to mention the reason for the delay...so they could finish armoring the last of the Humvees, completed yesterday.
I find that the reporter's statement about free speech a typically ignorant one and quite common for "journalists. If the question about proper armor was a legitimate one, why did he plant it? Are our soldiers not smart enough to ask meaningful questions? Didn't the reporter, by his set up and rehersal of the questions prohibit a more legitimate question from the soldier? The soldier's ex-wife said he had a big mouth anyway. Isn't that more a hindrance of "free speech"? Didn't the reporter violate the rules of the questioning - Rumsfield wanted to hear from the troops not journalists - and therefore promote his own agenda? He has all the time and permission to otherwise print his "news".
I think "journalists" prohibit free speech more by their personal agenda than anyone else.
I think that "journalists" think that this is still 1968 and we have only the big three to rely on for our news.
Do I have this right? The reporter was looking for a way to get publicity for a story he was determined to write (whether it was accurate or not is beside the point).
He found some soldiers who were eligible to ask questions of Rumsfeld, and coached them to ask the questions he wanted to see in print. And he made sure that those soldiers would be called upon.
Most importantly, these soldiers had not yet been to Iraq, and had no personal knowledge of the status of armored vehicles. They were helping to "make a story".
That wasn't a reporter, it was a "producer", and the Nat'l Guardsman was an "actor" in a "production".
It made a splash, all right. Just like Blather's documents about W's Nat'l Guard service. But we've got to get clear about the difference between "staged for tv" events and news.
sounds right to me!
Jim Geraghty at the Kerry Spot captured the essence of the problem with the reporter's little charade:
REPORTERS asking Rumsfeld tough questions is not news...it happens every day. Had the reporter asked the question himself, it would have been utterly unremarkable.
But, having a SOLDIER ask the question, allegedly spontaneously, was different. It changed the dynamics of the story and thus became big news for the MSM. Thus the reporter "created" news which would not otherwise have been reported.
Exactly. That's why I have a problem with calling this guy a "reporter". A reporter is supposed to tell us what is happening - not to make stories.
And these guys wonder why few of us trust the media??
It seems to me that most of the issues (like this one) have been with the Nat'l Guard and not with career soldiers.
Abu Graib, the desertion of one unit, etc. have all been Nat'l Guard. If there is even one incident involving career soldiers, I need to be reminded of it.
Surely the press has a picture of the vehicle described in the question...with 'rusty scrap metal' and 'broken ballistic glass'...right?
Sure they do!And they will look like the war footage that John Kerry took of the war atrocities in "Nam".Remember those?
"It seems to me that most of the issues (like this one) have been with the Nat'l Guard and not with career soldiers. "
I have also noticed this. My son,career soldier, went from an Abrams to a Bradley, to a Humvee and I never heard him complain once. When the Mother of the guardsman that posed the questioned was interviewed she said how proud she was of her son. Funny I would have been embarassed. Then again my son wouldn't have been duped by an ambitious reporter.
I think the Nat'l Guard has been performing splendidly on the whole. But a few of them don't seem to have the dedication to the military and their buddies that career soldiers like your son do.
I imagine that your son wouldn't do anything that could potentially embarrass or undermine his buddies or his chain of command.
I don't know where we got so many fine and brave young people. I'm not so sure we deserve them, but I thank God we have them.
And thank you for raising one of them.
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