From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon May 12 2003 - 16:24:07 MDT
Mike Lorrey wrote,
> I would bet that the facts would show that the embedded reporter filed
> the more accurate report in the vast majority of cases, while the
> non-embedded reporter was filing based on second and third hand
> information, generally Iraqi propaganda or that of sympathizers.
> Embedded reporters filed live video from the scene while non-embedded
> reporters filed from a hotel balcony in Amman or Kuwait or Bagdad.
Strange, but I have the opposite interpretation. The embedded journalists
usually were kept out of combat and out of harm's way. They filed live
reports from the aircraft carriers hundreds of miles away from the real
action. Whereas those reporters on the balconies of the hotels were often
in the very buildings being bombed. They seemed to have a better view of
the battleground than the embedded reporters most of the time.
> The
> nonembeds were of two sorts. They were either in bed with the enemy:
> from non-coalition countries and cooperated with the Baath regime, or
> they were of the old school cocktail set that thought covering a war
> meant spending more time around a hotel pool than anywhere else. Only
> the embeds, in my opinion, deserve the title Journalist.
Wow! Do you realize how close to endorsing a government-controlled media
this is? Only those reporters sponsored, approved and fed information from
the military government are real journalists, while independents, unapproved
journalists are automatically suspect and maybe even enemy sympathizers if
their stories don't match the official government releases. Without even
arguing the accuracy of this, even the theory of what you are proposing
seems about as anti-liberty as one can get. Since when did the free press
become the enemy of liberty and pro-government-controlled-media become the
politically correct position? Who are you and what have you done with Mike
Lorrey? :-)
> The classic example was Greg Kelly of FOX reporting from the front
> steps of Saddam's new palace in Bagdad at the same time that Bagdad
> Bob, aka Comical Ali, was claiming a few blocks away to international
> reporters that there were no Americans in Bagdad. Nobody today will now
> claim to have been present at Bagdad Bob's news conferences and taking
> his pronouncements as fact, though many did so at the time.
True, but there are similar cases in reverse. The famous image of Saddam's
statue being pulled down by Iraqi citizens are now known to have been staged
by the military using ex-Iraqis that we shipped in.
> Please, Harvey, document any actual instance where an embedded reporter
> was ordered to report facts not in evidence.
You will probably object that these examples don't prove the reporters were
"ordered" to lie, but they certainly were fed information which later turned
out to be false.
Read "The Military's Media" by Robert Jensen
<http://www.progressive.org/may03/jen0503.html>. The first paragraph claims
that reporters were given specific orders on what to say and not say in
their news broadcasts. He even quotes one reporter saying "we have been
given orders" and changing it to "the soldier have been given orders" later.
The toppling of Saddam's statue was a staged event reported exactly as the
military told the reporters to report it.
<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm> Wider pictures
show the obviously staged small event in a cordained off area. It is hard
to imagine that anybody involved thought this was a real event being
reported. They reporters and camera crews all helped stage the events,
crop, edit the pictures to make it appear like a large crowded event, and
then presented the desired result as independent, objective news and not a
military PR event.
Looting in Bagdad was often encouraged (or at least not discouraged) by U.S.
soldiers and then fed to the reporters as evidence of the populace rising up
against Saddam.
<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3311.htm>
This report lists a number of instances where independent reporters were int
imidated by the U.S. military trying to block their stories when they
disputed the official military version.
<http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0401-10.htm>
The rescue of Jessica Lynch seems to have been highly fictional according to
<http://timesargus.nybor.com/Story/64568.html>. It describes the embedded
reporters as being hand-picked by the military and too dependent on reports
fed to them from their military handlers. It also lists a whole bunch of
other stories that turned out to be inaccurate. All of these seem to have
been fed to the reporters who dutifully reported them, and then later turned
out to have no basis in fact or no supporting evidence besides the military
press release. One particularly obvious story is the article written by
Times reporter Judith Miller, who later admitted that she was not allowed to
see any of the evidence or interview the people. She just repeated what the
military handlers told her to say. This probably has the longest list of
specific examples.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, IAM, GSEC, IBMCP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> <www.Newstaff.com>
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