Posted on 02/01/2006 7:36:28 AM PST by yankeedame
Bloom
You are correct, Bloom.
" 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."
This isn't surprising. Brokaw never really got worked up about 9/11 until someone sent him anthrax in an envelope.
I don't really care that Woodruff and his side-kick were hit. In fact, I believe there may be some divine retribution going on here to teach the left-wing anti-American MSM leeches about what our military really does in their behalf. Perhaps during his recovery - and he will recover because he is being offered the best medical care in the world - he will get to know personally US personnel who have been there and done that. Perhaps he will learn some humility and, just perhaps, this will change his attitudes toward the US military and what it is accomplishing in Iraq, and elsewhere all over the world, for the USA. If only he will have the courage to become a spokesman for the military.
Not a tinfoiler but all men should steer clear of Vargas. She's bad luck: Jennings, Cohn, Woodruff
Your observations are good ones and valuable ones.
I think the big big picture of journalism is the culture and the ownership/management.
I say the culture because I think all institutions have a corporate memory. Congress gets used to a life of privilege. Baseball gets used to spitting in the dugout and adjusting things while in the field. Hockey gets used to stars without a full compelement of teeth. Academia gets used to tweed jackets with patches on the elbows. These traditions gets passed on and replicated and they become very ingrained. Journos get used to leftist diatribes and anti-Americanism. And it's hard to change that in short time - maybe even in a generation.
And also management and ownership plays a huge role. In the final analysis all these newshounds and newsbabes server at the pleasure or lack thereof of the owning corporation. The lefties probabably gravitate to the places that they know they'll be appreciated but even if that weren't the case, one adapts to please the boss. It's an old story. Fred Flinstone had to do so with his boss at the quarry and George Jetson had to kiss Mr. Spacely's ass.
So until the culture changes and the management/ownership changes (which is a bit of a chicken and egg problem itself as the reporterettes at some point grow up to be editors and managers) the leftist machine will self-perpetuate.
This is exactly what I have been thinking.
Good point, and it also was the basis for Chrstiane Ammanpour's self-centered tirade on Larry King the other night. The press mostly lives in an alternate universe.
By the way, lots of other civilians besides Woodruff go outside the wire on a daily basis in Iraq. I have respect for all of them, but at the same time assume they know the huge risks they are taking. Most do.
Perhaps this is crass, but if a KBR truck driver is injured or killed by an IED (and many have been), that is literally no different than what's happened to Woodruff. Yet nobody says the KBR driver's injury or even death is anything more than a risk that was calculated, taken, and lost. Period.
The MSM would like us to believe that their lives are more important than others in Iraq, and that their injuries demand some sort of unusual compensatory response.
Heck, the best I could hope for while there, was that there might be some 155mm counterfire against the almost daily incoming mortar attacks.
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