Fausta's blog

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The official blog of Fausta's Blog Talk Radio show.

Monday, February 14, 2005

The MSM, "a news industry in the midst of a stunning revolution"
From the NY Sun editorial,
Not long ago, the columnist Mark Steyn wrote, "Remind me never to complain about 'liberal media bias' again. Right now, liberal media bias is conspiring to assist the Democrats to sleepwalk over the cliff." It was a typically prescient observation. For it certainly seems that it's not just honest-liberal editors, like Mr. Keller, who are waking up. In the Eason Jordan affair, it was an honest-liberal politician, congressman Barney Frank, who confronted CNN's Mr. Jordan for his remarks in Davos accusing American troops of deliberately killing journalists.
Via Hispalibertas, Boston Herald reporter Jules Critteden says,
I am also alarmed that the editor of a major media watchdog publication's web spinoff would cite a report titled Two Murders and a Lie (Reporters Without Borders, and apparently without standards) to support Jordan, as well as the similarly flawed Permission to Fire, (Committee to Protect Journalists) both of which offer selectively reported and distorted views of the Palestine incident that are peppered with inaccuracies and speculation. There is no evidence to support accusations of either murder or lying in the Palestine incident.
Critteden was actually at the Hotel Palestine. Mudville Gazette interviewed Critteden, who explains,
JC: Yes. I was quoted in the reports, selectively and/or inaccurately, and had RWB remove my remarks, which they reported inaccurately and without permission. CPJ, while casting aspersions on the soldiers based on speculation, neglected to include remarks I made on the character of Gibson and CO Capt. Phillip Wolford, whom I knew as professionals who went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. I lived with them, rode with them into a series of actions and have great respect for them. The Palestine was an accident by well-intentioned men who had been under fire, some of it intense, since dawn the day before.

All of us who went to Iraq, embedded and non-embedded press, knew we could be killed. Many of us narrowly avoided it, but others weren't so lucky. It is part of the deal. What happened at the Palestine underscores the fact that there is no safe place in a war zone. That point also is illustrated by what happened to two European reporters embedded with 2nd Brigade of the 3rd ID, who they chose not to join the assault on Baghdad on April 7 due to the danger. They stayed back at the brigade TOC, where they were killed by an Iraqi missile. So much for second guessing one's safety options.
Mudville Gazette will have further posts on this subject.

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