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| Home Front: Politix |
| Enough to Make You Sick |
| 2004-04-26 |
| From the April 18, 2004, News Herald (Florida) - via Robert Prather EFL By Phil Lucas The stories we tell define the nation. Stories poorly told can destroy it. It works the same with children. If you tell 10 stories a day to a lovely child and nine of them say she is weak, ugly and stupid, she will come to believe it. She may be pregnant by 15, a meth addict by 17, join a cult by 19, then elope with the family cat to get married in Massachusetts. So it goes with the country. Consider our national storytellers: the media. Yecch Ten days ago, American and coalition forces engaged Iraqi âinsurgents,â as the national press politely calls them. Sane Americans know them as the enemy, gunmen of an Islamic religious leader. An American brigadier general gave a televised briefing on the battle for several cities. As he explained the fight for Fallujah and how we had taken three bridges at Kut, suddenly across the bottom of the screen appeared a Fox News Alert: EXPLOSION HEARD IN BAGHDAD!!!!! Fox immediately switched to a camera shot of a Baghdad skyline. The voice of a reporter came on, urgently speculating about an explosion, perhaps caused by a car bomb or a mortar or an RPG (rocket propelled grenade, to the unwashed) or whatever else the reporter could think of. Then the camera zeroed in on a hole in some concrete, perhaps a parking lot or sidewalk. The hole appeared to be about the size of a wheelbarrow, the evident location of the EXPLOSION HEARD IN BAGHDAD!!!!! They got an expert on the phone. The TV guys keep a herd of experts handy for just such an event. The reporter asked the expert what could have happened. He said to her, and I paraphrase, âIâll tell you what happened. This is a war of information. You were showing the generalâs briefing, and they wanted you off it, so they set off a bomb in Baghdad.â The reporter stammered, âUh, oh . . .â and commenced to get the guy off the phone. He had more expertise than she expected. Heh We have all noticed that the few stories we get from people who have served in or visited Iraq rarely match the sky-is-falling enthusiasm we get from our press. Some call this biased reporting. I call it deceitful, or just plain lying. Me, too - particularly the lying part. Press folly plumbs new depths when witnessed live, as in the televised press conference itself. It was enough to raise old editors from the dead, their standards and self-discipline sorely missing from the modern newsroom. Others of us just squirmed with embarrassment, partly for the president, prone to trip over a syllable, but mostly for the profession. Reporter after reporter couched questions in the negative, assuming the worst was true, knowing the worst was true, looking for the kill. They used words like failure, defeat and mistake, time after time after time. Thatâs not reporting. Thatâs not seeking truth. Thatâs an agenda. Smelling blood, the pack salivated for an apology from the president. On this point I agree. An apology is in order. So here it is. I am sorry our storytellers have us by the neck. We are better than they picture us. We are better than they are. As an editor, I apologize to Americans for the national disgrace of inept and self-indulgent journalists, who hound after the worst and ugliest to the exclusion of much else, who strut their opinions with conceit, and who spew it all forth upon the public and call it news. Preach it, brother! I need to bookmark this web site. His editorials should be published around the country. The previous one I posted should get a Pulitzer. Neither will happen - he writes what the majority of Americans think, not what the whiny-assed elite liberal "news" media thinks. |
| Posted by:Barbara Skolaut bskolaut@hotmail.com |
| #2 eLarson - too true. I intend to bookmark the News Herald's web site. It appears he writes these on Sundays. He needs a much wider audience. (He needs a Pulitzer Prize.) Wonder if the WSJ or the Washington Times would publish his editorials? |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-04-26 8:49:42 PM |
| #1 Barbara - Thanks! If the rest of his stuff is as full-on anti-idiotarian as the two examples you've posted, he's a MUST READ. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2004-04-26 8:43:28 PM |