Yess...yess...keep on zinking zat I am stewpid...but who iss it zat always gets zee girl?!!!
Posted on 10/25/2001 2:16:14 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
John L. Perry
Oct. 22, 2001
On the great Pink Panther set in the sky, Peter Sellers must be guffawing at American newsies' unintended mimicry of his bumbling French-sleuth character.
Like the imperious Chief Inspector Clouseau, who always got it wrong and never knew the difference, the nattering nullities who aren't really journalists but play them on television are falling all over themselves in pratfalls on-camera and off, trying to "cover" their country's war on terrorism.
One would think their crowning concern would be whether they are doing a first-rate professional job of journalism. One would be wrong.
Instead, what has them in a pet is their preconceived conviction that President Bush is managing their war news.
They'd Like to Run the War
After all, doesn't news belong to them? And if news belongs to them, then isn't it their job to manage the news of the war?
If they can't do that, then how can they possibly manage the war as they think it should be waged?
So they've made an issue of Freedom of the Press out of the way George W. Bush is discharging his constitutional responsibility as commander in chief to wage war.
They operate under two serious handicaps:
Most of them haven't a clue what war is, having never had to fight in or report on one under actual fire.
And they obviously know even less about Freedom of the Press and the commensurate responsibilities that accompany it.
Not a Pink Panther Sequel
Taking themselves ever-so seriously, they appear oblivious that people who do know something about war, journalism and the First Amendment are either looking at them in disgusted disbelief or laughing at their collective ineptitude.
The sobering thing, though, is that this is no Pink Panther comic film. This is real-life war. It makes a world of difference how the ending comes out. And the Bill of Rights is more than a sound-bite slogan. It is the life's blood of this nation.
In the hilarious series that Peter Sellers immortalized right up to his early death, the more Clouseau mucked up things the funnier it was. That was fine, for there were always the bona-fide civil servants of the Paris sûreté to clean up the messes he made.
Grading Their Own Papers
Not so with the Beltway Press Follies. Its ham actors not only get to botch up the news of the day, they also have the last word on their own last words.
So, one of the principal Clouseau conundrums currently besetting America's press establishmentarians is: Does the Voice of America have First Amendment press-freedom guarantees?
No, of course it doesn't. It's not a news service; it's – as it jolly-well should be – a propaganda voice for the government of the United States of America, which so happens to be at war at the moment.
'It's One of Us'
Doesn't matter, argue the news-media know-it-alls. They've decided to declare VOA a pure-as-snow journalistic enterprise, entitled to all the free-press protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
Ipse dixit, the president had better keep his political paws off whatever VOA wants to broadcast abroad.
Back in a moment after the following messages to set the record straight:
VOA, which has been around since 1942, in World War II, broadcasts by radio around the world in 53 languages to some 91 million people each week.
It is not beamed at Western Europe or to Americans here in the United States, but its information programming is available to anyone and everyone on the Internet.
Funded by U.S. taxpayers, VOA is lodged in the Department of State.
It is run by a bipartisan board of governors appointed by the president.
The board "oversees all U.S. government and government-sponsored, non-military, international broadcasting."
That list includes, in addition to VOA, WorldNet Television and Film Service, Radio and TV Marti (directed at communist Cuba), Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
VOA's congressionally mandated mission is "to be accurate, objective and comprehensive; to represent all aspects of American society and to present a balanced and comprehensive view of significant American thought and institutions; and [emphasis added] clearly present the policies of the United States."
But, according to the board's chairman, Marc B. Nathanson, a Bill Clinton appointee and well-known fund-raiser for the Democratic presidential candidacy of former Vice President Al Gore, the board's responsibility is to:
"Serve as a firewall between the international broadcasters and the policy-making institutions in the foreign-affairs community, both here in Washington and overseas."
Nobody believes that baloney. Not to put too blunt a point on it, but the VOA is this country's international propaganda agency.
Nor is there anything wrong with that. God knows the American taxpayers are entitled to have a voice setting forth the true position of this nation in the welter of lies, half-truths and downright disinformation being pumped out against it by other nations' propaganda machines.
The people overseas whom VOA is trying to influence know they aren't listening to an independent voice. They know it's Uncle Sam speaking.
Let Omar Buy His Own Soap Box
If VOA is faithful to its charter to "clearly present the policies of the United States," then what in the name of all that's American was VOA thinking when it put an interview with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban, on the air under the imprimatur of the good ol' U S of A?
This is the same Omar whose Islamic radicals have been running the government of Afghanistan, which has given Osama bin Laden and his terrorists safe haven, the same Taliban with whom the United States is now at war.
Oh, yes, that's exactly what happened after the Eleventh of September terrorist attack on the United States. And your taxpayer dollars funded every word Omar said, denouncing the United States over VOA stations around the world – including into Afghanistan.
Rebellion in the Ranks
So the Bush White House did what any red-blooded American would have done. It tried to stop VOA from making that broadcast.
Because the Bush administration didn't want VOA to assist the Taliban leader in spreading his anti-American slander, some 150 VOA employees – as if they didn't get paid to work for this government – threatened to resign en masse if the interview were not broadcast.
The governing board caved, and VOA officials bulled right ahead anyway and put Omar on the air.
This brought a number of American journalists to the defense – not of the United States president, but of VOA, its willful staffers and, by extension, the head of the Taliban terrorists who stood to benefit from this sedition.
We're Fighting for This?
Typical of them was syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff, who describes himself as "a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights." Hentoff wrote that the VOA staffers' action "was an admirable illustration of the freedoms we are fighting to protect."
A similar view was proclaimed in an op-ed column of the Wall Street Journal by Bob Zelnick, once a Pentagon correspondent for ABC News and now with Boston University's journalism department. The gist of Zelnick's column was captured in this headline: "Bush Should Manage the War, Not the News."
More than a few TV talking heads were set to nodding agreement.
Speaking up for an almost-otherwise silent minority in journalism's ranks was New York Times columnist William Safire, who wanted to know if folks like Hentoff and Zelnick would have advocated "equal time for Hitler."
How to Mangle a Message
And a Wall Street Journal editorial took VOA over the coals:
"Far from convincing Afghans of the wondrous nature of America's free press, VOA just sent them a confusing message: Does the U.S. want us to rise up and oppose this guy, or not?"
The fuzzies of American journalists need to get a few things straight:
The president's job – not the news media's – is to run this war and win it.
Part of that job is to have the agencies of the government he heads singing off the same sheet as he, and that goes especially for the VOA, which is this government's voice to the rest of the world.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was right on target when he told the press he would not lie to them, but neither was he obligated to tell them every last thing he knew about how the war is being conducted.
Reporting doesn't consist of sitting around White House and Pentagon briefing rooms taking notes like a secretary. It means getting out where the news is and reporting it, even if that means getting shot at by the enemy.
VOA is as much a government agency, an instrument of government policy, as the Marine Corps, the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, the Coast Guard, the CIA, the FBI or the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
So what's all this nonsense about VOA being an independent purveyor of news?
Its job – its only job – is to broadcast clearly and forthrightly America's line and be proud doing it. Or step aside and let someone do it who is proud to portray this country.
VOA is no one's journalistic entity. That is why it enjoys absolutely zero First Amendment rights, precisely why it should not enjoy any.
The non-government-controlled press in this country is blessed as no other on this planet. It and only it has the First Amendment press-freedom guarantees.
Along with those rights go commensurate responsibilities.
The surest way for genuine journalists to retain those rights is to guard them jealously – not throw them away at inappropriate surrogates such as VOA – and to get busy meeting the responsibilities that go hand-in-glove with a free press.
Enough of imitating Inspector Clouseau. This is war, not the movies. There is no Pink Panther. There is a Yellow Terrorist.
John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.
Other Columns by John L. Perry
Fire them, now! And their evildoer Clinton/Gore pal leader, too.
As if President Bush didn't have enough to deal with. We could get 150 patriotic Americans to fill those spots in a day.
"Serve as a firewall between the international broadcasters and the policy-making institutions in the foreign-affairs community, both here in Washington and overseas."
Our troops deserve better. This head of the VOA refused President Bush's request not to play Taliban propaganda. ??????
They're asking for crime reports, hand them a mirror (or send this article).
Good question. I do believe that the playing of O/Usama's video against the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief during wartime is a firing offense, at least.
I didn't know that VOA was part of the State Dept., or that it does not have first amendment protection. Can you imagine VOA with FR radio personnel at the controls? (^:
Yess...yess...keep on zinking zat I am stewpid...but who iss it zat always gets zee girl?!!!
Somebody get me Johnny Cochran on the phone...
Because the Bush administration didn't want VOA to assist the Taliban leader in spreading his anti-American slander, some 150 VOA employees –
as if they didn't get paid to work for this government –
threatened to resign en masse if the interview were not broadcast.The governing board caved, and VOA officials bulled right ahead anyway and put Omar on the air.
Giving aid and comfort to the enemy at a time of war used to be called TREASON!
Fire ALL of them - NOW! - and hire some AMERICANS to work for the Voice of America!
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Fire the traitors now, is right. Non-leftists are the best people in radio. There would be no shortage of qualified patriots to take over these jobs. Thank you.
Can you imagine VOA with FR radio personnel at the controls? (^:
I can DEFINITELY imagine it!
And this sounds like a PERFECT job for... the UnSpun Duo!
When can you two start?
Taxpayers support NPR, too. This insanity must end! (^:
***America's Remarkable Goodness: What the Critics Refuse to Acknowledge
***Only Foreigners Bleed
***President Bush's Moral Clarity
***International Religious Freedom. Taliban human rights abuses.
*** The United States Military vs. the Media: Constitutional Friction (Long)
You mean this man: the board's chairman, Marc B. Nathanson, a Bill Clinton appointee and well-known fund-raiser for the Democratic presidential candidacy of former Vice President Al Gore?
Al Gore, the man who did every single thing he could to make sure that overseas military votes weren't counted last fall?
And you're shocked? They HATE American as it is now, you know that.
This is a prime example of an inept unqualified POLITICO being rewarded for MONEY. I'd say it's a quid pro quo.
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