Posted on 01/10/2008 3:56:09 PM PST by SandRat
| WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2008 – All four services met or surpassed their monthly active-duty recruiting goals for December, and five of the six reserve components showing similar success, Defense Department officials announced today.
The Army recruited 789 active-duty soldiers last month, 105 percent of its December goal. On the reserve-component side, the Army National Guard recruited 4,985 members, 120 percent of its goal, and the Army Reserve, 3,280 soldiers, 107 percent of its goal. |
| Biographies: Lt. Gen. Clyde A. Vaughn, USA Pete Geren Related Sites: |
And the D-rats are deeply saddened.
This cant be true!
Mad Murtha said our armed forces are broken. He wouldnt lie would he? (Sarcasm off)
Is this news in AP, NYTs, Reuters, Newsweek, Time, CNN, MSNBC, CBS land?
Lets look:
http://www.cnn.com/US/ Nope
http://www.reuters.com/news/us Nope
http://www.associatedpress.com/ Nope
http://www.newsweek.com/ Nope
http://www.time.com/time/ Nope
http://www.nytimes.com/ Nope
The point is when one month you have a negative in a single branch these papers and magazines run articles asking profound questions like: “Is Iraq breaking the back of our Army?” Of course when the same branch actually meets recruiting goals over 90% of the rest of the time, this is no story.
What does this say about the media?
You can’t be mad or upset when talking to people and if they ask idiotic questions that are more or less centered around some myth of the Army being over stretched, morale being low, the soldiers all committing suicide, PTSD being rampant, DU causing cancer, and soldiers hating Bush because the administration didn’t give them the equipment they need to fight a war. The media creates a highly contorted picture of reality. Reenlistment is high, the Army is meeting its goals, and over 75% voted Bush in 2004! The Army is at or near its end strength and troop rotations into and out of theater are on average with over one year break in between. The soldiers are being equipped as fast as possible with nearly any gizmo or technology someone can think up or even just dream up that can be leveraged against the threat. The reality, something this article is paints, is 180 degrees from what CNN.com preaches. Many in the MSM as with the Rumsfeld HMMWV scandal set things up and create the scandal, they create the news they report! Staged pictures, dropping the seed into the soldier’s ear during a town-hall style meeting in Iraq and waiting for this soldier to ask some loaded question to Rumsfeld, literally searching out that one disgruntled soldier willing to make a statement that is negative, harping on some bad incident Abu Gahrib but ignoring the thousands of success stories, etc. etc. etc.
The agenda in the media is flagrant. Partially driven by a liberal bias, a loathing of the soldier, and a hate for this administration, near everything you get is filtered with those eyes. This is reported to you by a bunch of amateurs with no idea what they are reporting on, who overzealously believe everything they want to hear, like Rather did, but ignore all the rest. They’re not professionals in reality and there is no licensing or anything else. There is no ethics board that could disbar, impeach, or take other action against one. Indeed some papers make their living by creating fabricated stories all together, and they write off character defamation cases as an operating expense. They will willingly go along and act as an unofficial press agent for despot regimes such as Saddam’s, as long as they get exclusive rights there, which was the case with CNN. They flat out covered up murders of their own Iraq staff so that they would not be kicked out of Iraq and remain as an exclusive US news corporation reporting from Iraq. They seek a scandal or some form of conflict because it is this that sells the news. The market for news has turned into a bunch of niche markets and most papers have a very accurate analysis of who their consumers are. They write in the language, style, and not only cover the types of stories but interpret what it all means for the reader. “News” has become near indistinguishable from editorial writing. Some even report the same story very differently in different parts of the world, catering to their viewers. They pander and tell people what they want to hear more so than report the simple facts. They spin any event to fit the agenda and they selectively report. Of course anything with pictures will sell well. Reporting is not fact checked, and even if they later know they reported something incorrectly, errors are only reported if called out. Condensed and oversimplified, to the point where it can fit into a sound bite and someone with an eighth grade education can read it, it is superficial. One has to wonder why people even watch the news. It is a waste of time!
A British ditty from the beginning of the last century:
“You do not have
To bribe or twist
The arm
Of the British journalist
Considering what he would do
Unasked
There is no reason to.”
Inspired by the “caveat emptor” principle of Roman law, which sounds a note of caution for potential buyers, media consumers should heed the unwritten warning, “Reader/Viewer/Listener beware.” And some Strong Criticism within the journalistic profession wouldn’t hurt either.
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