Posted on 02/01/2006 7:36:28 AM PST by yankeedame
THE TROOPS HAVE IT RIGHT
Interesting observation from some of our troops in Iraq today.
By now you know that ABC World News Tonight anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman were injured a few days ago in a roadside bombing in Iraq. They've been transported back to the United States, where they are expected to eventually make a full recovery. Our prayers go out to them and their families as we wish them a speedy recovery.
But some aren't so thrilled with all of the media coverage Woodruff and his colleague are getting. It seems the rank and file are a bit peeved that the injuries of 2 journalists are getting all of this attention. What about the other troops that have died or have been seriously injured? Good point.
Said one: "Why do you think this is such a huge story? It's a bit stunning to us over here how absolutely dominant the story is on every network and front page. I mean, you'd think we lost the entire 1st Marine Division or something. There's a lot of grumbling from guys at all ranks about it. That's a really impolite and impolitic thing to say ... but it's what you would hear over here." I suppose they're right, although it's not Woodruff's or his cameraman's fault.
One military officer said it seems the impression being left is that press people are more important than the military. They just might be right.
Only in the minds of the press, Troop.
FIDO.
The press, by and large, are maggots. Don't believe me? Just ask a member of the press. They loathe one another. Just like lawyers do.
Want to see the biggest conglomeration of moaners and whiners in DC? Simple, just got to the National Press Club bar on Friday afternoons. There you will see a terrific gathering of poorly-dressed, overweight, loudmouth know-it-alls known as "journalists". But then the citizenry of our country has always thought little of the press. No point in changing now, is there?
I thought the same thing when I heard them STILL talking about these reporters.
There's the rub
Because our supposedly objective non-biased MSM loves nothing more than making itself the subject of the story. Newsman goes to war zone and gets wounded? That's a real dog-bites-man story AFAIC.
The war has suddenly become REAL to the mainstream media. - some jerk on TV the other day.
I think all reporters should get a Purple Heart because of the injuries suffered by the two ABC Newsmen. At least that's my opinion derived from the way every reporter covered it on every channel every hour. Orwellian.
Blum and Kelly died in Iraq. But Blum died of natural causes, I guess, and Kelly was sympathetic to the American and Coalition cause. So they don't count.
My heart pumps piss for wartime media traitors. They do not deserve to share a hospital with our wounded troops.
I read somewhere in an earlier article that Bob Woodruff realized he could go anywhere in the world to cover these stories and GET PAID FOR IT. If someone knows of the article of which I speak would you post it? It was published right after he was wounded. I hope and pray he recovers fully as I would hope and pray for any one of our military serving all of us around the world. However, the way the press is spinning it is ludicrous. We all have choices. Go to a war zone or don't go to a war zone. Prayers for Mr. Woodruff and his cameraman along with prayers for all our military in hospitals right now dealing with lost limbs, loss of eyesite, those who are paralyzed and so on with the horrors of war. God bless them all.
Agree with all the comments on this thread and others.
I would only add this.
It just shows that the main stream pressitutes are not writing/printing "What the people want to hear". It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are motivated by "what they want to write". The average man in the street could give a rat's hind end for someone who just took over for Petah Jennings and whom very few people would know the name or the face.
Of course 10 news cycles later, everyone has heard the name, but that is after it has been drummed/beaten into them. But the original decsision to make this banner headline stuff can *only* derive from their narcissistic desire to make themselves the story.
Which is which we have been saying all along.
It really is a funhouse of mirrors when you try to analyze whether the press is a certain way because the people expect it or whether the people expect it because the press is a certain way and after a few news cycles the distinction becomes impossible to make.
But in this one case the distinction is simple to make - this is the press writing for the press and not because they are "giving the people what they want."
Case closed.
In the midst of a two-month reporting trip in Iraq in 2005, I stopped at the Balad emergency hospital, toured it for an hour and interviewed a dozen doctors and nurses. I couldn't find a news hook to write about it, so I didn't.
Yet literally every day the press finds a "news hook" in another casualty, another death, or yet another suicide bomber.
They harp and moan falsely about the "overcrowding" in military field hospitals in Iraq. They focus on the news from three years ago, about under-equipped troops and under-armored Humvees (during my 6 months at Balad I never saw troops without body armor and only a small handfull of Humvees that haden't been up-armored).
Yet this journo spends time in Balad and doesn't realize that he's standing in one of the most advanced and effective field hospitals the military has ever deployed. And it stands in front of one of the most efficient and thorough medical evacuation units on earth: an injured soldier can literally be moved from the field of battle to a U.S. military hospital in Germany in less than 12 hours.
This is our news media, and this is how they think. If it's a success, if it works, if it demonstrates competence and duty, it doesn't have a "news hook".
If it's a disaster, a death, a bomb, a mistake, that is what will get their undivided attention.
It's a mind-set for reporters graduating
Journalism school. In the same way
every young reporter wants a "Watergate
scoop" like Woodward and Berstein, every
embedded reporter sees himself as an
Ernie Pyle! And who can deny the nightly newscasters/analysts from Hannity or
O'Reilly to Brown don't envision themselves
as the latest version of Rather and Jennings.
"It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are motivated by "what they want to write"."
Agreed. See my #14.
I guess I can only add that I have two friends/acquaintances that are/were fairly high up in the journalistic trade. One worked for a major metropolitan newspaper and one still works our govt funded news organization. They are both hard core lefties in their personal mails and when I express my countervailing opinion they think I'm a right wing kook. And these folks are the ones in charge of two of our major media outlets. I can only assume they are fairly typical of their brethren.
In another professional life I worked regularly with a lot of journos. Some remain good friends to this day, but we do have to be tolerant and even indulgent about our differing political views, otherwise we'd not be friends.
I'd guess that 80 to 90 percent of the many dozens I knew (or know) are on the center to far left of the political spectrum.
Again it's interesting that the UPI reporter didn't find a "news hook" while standing inside the best combat field hospital in the world. Because during my time in Iraq, Stars & Stripes ran several stories about the Balad operation, and I always thought those were among the best stories they ever produced (a lot of Stars & Stripes Iraq is warmed-over wire copy).
It's more than just an 'impression'. During Good Morning America on Monday, I believe it was Diane Sawyer who made the observation that perhaps Woodruff's being so badly injured would be the "tipping point" in the war, that he was someone so well-known that it would be "one person too many". With comments like this from the arrogant 'It's All About Us' media, no wonder the troops are offended and upset ......
If I could have reached through the TV and slapped Diane's smarmy face I would have (and Elizabeth Vargas would have been next).
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