I understand your points, and acknowledge that you make a persuasive argument for the necessity of an independent perspective in news reporting.
That much I generally agree with.
If journalists maintain not only an independence from supporting the U.S. government, as they do an independence from supporting the
opposition of U.S. govenment.
Journalism's independent perspective, across the board. The lack of which, I'm rather critical of.
While you were still drafting your post, I corrected a few typos and clarified some sentences in my last post. So what you quoted differs slightly from the final draft of my above post, submitted while you were writing your above response to it.
When I say "patriotism", I partly mean U.S. nationalism, but more precisely I mean social responsibility. As I made clear in my above post. And the story, and the photos from Abu Ghraib of prisoners being humiliated, were published before the full extent of abuse was known.
It was almost a week later, after the initial hyperbole of the unknown extent of the Abu Ghraib abuses.
It was only later that the extent of charges, as I've said, extends only to 7 U.S. military police, 4 interrogators, and 6 superior officers. But because of the hype --because of irresponsible spin-- it was hyped initially to be unknown to what extent these abuses permeated the entire occupation force. Creating a false image of vast abuse, playing to Arab paranoia of conspiracy.
THAT is irresponsible, invokes undue rage, and further endangers U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and the Iraqis who cooperate with them.
And it's been quite clear that the liberal media has not supported this war from the very beginning, and has taken every cheap opportunity to spin it negatively, and present the United States in the worst light possible.
That is not objective reporting, that is
selective reporting of the facts, with considerable editorial, to support their liberal pre-conceived biases.
Predicting U.S. failure from before the war began, over-emphasizing every setback, ignoring the incredible pace of reconstruction. Reporting unproven
allegations of profiteering by Bush and Cheney as if they were facts. Negative spin, not objective reporting, every step of the way over the last 18 months, prior to, during, and after the war.
The Abu Ghraib guard abuses were just the latest bit of ammunition, for a press that has demonstrated its bias against Bush every step of the way.
As Fouad Ajami said (in my PBS quote at the bottom of page 2) our enemies were waiting for us to stumble, and leaped on it when the mistake was made.
But reporting of the abuses is disproportionate to how quickly the U.S. investigated, prosecuted the offenders, and quickly changed procedures to insure these abuses are never repeated.
Again:
7 offenders. 135,000 troops.
A very low ratio, over-exploited for its symbolic value. Because it is a small irony, not a literal representation of U.S. policy as a whole.
I find it deeply unsettling that you have no problem with the exploitation of this by the media, and by America's enemies, in such a deliberately misrepresentative way.
I'm all for journalistic integrity and objectivity.
But this is just exploitation and spin. Just as coverage throughout the war has been disproportionately negative toward the United States.
If WW II were reported the way the Iraq war is being reported, we might have lost that war. It's fortunate we had Edward Murrow instead of Peter Jennings.
