The Opinionated Bastard

My thoughts exactly.

Jan’s comment is typical of the type of people who oppose the war. Even with the knowledge of all the deaths caused in Vietnam by the US pulling out, the ‘immediate withdrawal’ crowd will accept no responsibility for the consequences if their demands are met.

It is a fact that the Viet Cong were defeated, but hung on because of our ‘anti-war’ protestors. And when we pulled out there was a mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people.

The only people who didn’t learn from that are the ‘anti-war’ crowd. That includes the media. They have taken the anti-war stance and they will stick with it no matter now much news they have to squelch to support their view.

I have a hard time believing it’s all for money though, because they are losing massive amounts of money. I don’t completely believe it’s a conspiracy, but I know they are so zealous in their beliefs, and they’ve gone for so long with no oversight, that they discriminate against journalists who might hold a different view and let slide any story that fits into their model.

Congrats on the insta-link. Good post. I didn’t realize the media was doing that all day during the riots. It was before the internet so there was no one to tell me that out in Chicago.

I think the fall of the media began in the 70’s when stopped thinking of themselves as the proxies of their customers and started thinking of themselves as their customer’s educators and leaders.

In the previous era, journalist thought of themselves as ordinary people who stood in for the rest of us in places we ourselves could not be. They thought of themselves as conduits for facts. They did not believe they had any special perspective or knowledge.

In the 70’, journalist began to think of themselves as an anointed elite who were far more knowledgeable and wise than the people they served. The adopted the idea that they had a moral obligation to shape public opinion to match their own superior viewpoint.

Unfortunately for the media, they are collectively no more intelligent or informed than any other group and people rapidly saw through their attempts to foist their insular world view onto everyone else.

The media has forgotten that we purchase their products for information, not indoctrination. A media service that cannot function as a proxy for me and provide me the kind of information I need to make decisions is worthless to me and I won’t pay for it.

Its a good article but why?…

why?

why?

why?

do you define such motives as incompetent?

Ill will explains much more.

The media is the primary focus of the insurgent war. They have no realistic hope of prevailing against the US military. But they’ve learned the lesson well that if they get on the front pages of the NYTimes often enough, they can pursuade the American people to quit.

The outcome of this is still in doubt, because the terrorist “media strategy” works well.

“It would a very different war”, you say: but how — specifically?. In football terms, with ten seconds on the clock and your team is down by four points, would you expect them to play harder if they’re on their own five yard line, or on the opponent’s five? The MSM is telling al Qaeda that they’re within striking distance of their goal. When MSM issues negative reports, al-Qaida can say to themselves “We’ve almost persuaded them. Let us make a few more attacks, behead a few more hostages; and after the next American election, they will withdraw.” I don’t think most of the MSM is consciously cooperating with al-Qaeda—but if I were on a jury, I’d have to say that the MSM’s behavior does constitute “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”

How dare you question the job the media are doing. Don’t you know that they are the new clergy?

Living in LA, I remember the King riots (sorry, uprising) very well. The Media’s pimping of the violence was shameful. Did they learn from it? No.

I still remember the prepping for the OJ verdict. I think they were actually surprised (and sadly disappointed) that the white people didn’t riot when OJ got away with murder. There also seemed to be an undertone that the black folks would riot if OJ was guilty, particularly since OJ was doing everything in his power to ingratiate himself with the black community.

I agree on all of the above. I was living in L.A. during the Rodney King riots and saw exactly how the media fanned the flames and then crowed about the result. This is the M.O. of what Rush now is calling the Drive By Media.

Incidentally, I work with many knee-jerk (emphasis on the JERK) liberals who freely admit they don’t give a damn about Iraqi lives. This is one of the many ways I know that, protestations to the contrary, the Dems in general and libs in particular really do not give a damn about lives, period.

I think the winning quote is here;

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that most of all, I blame the media for being incompetent.”

I concur. When so much of the ingformation I use to take for granted is proving to be erroneous or so slanted as to be useless, I have to start over!

What is chellenging is that almost anyone can support their own world view with a few simple clicks. Most folks would kill for a truly unbiased arbiter of facts.

Jan says “They are most affected by what their friends and family think of the war, and most people with close connections to the soldiers have remained strong supporters of the war. Yes, I’m sure it is harder for soldiers and their loved ones to maintain morale in an atmosphere that is more critical of the war, but I don’t see how higher morale on the part of American soldiers would have a lot of influence on what insurgents are doing.”

If everyone’s insulated from the MSM, why do the anti-war folks hold protest? Why did Cindy S. spend the summer in Crawford,TX.?

Excellent post. The media’s handling of Hurricane Katrina — hyping unsubstantiated and even hysterical fantasies about mass looting and killing — is another recent example of how in many cases they make things worse.

Some good points, presented extremely well! Thanks very much.

Let me add one point that I don’t believe has been made here yet. Military morale is an extremely important factor in any battle, in any war; it’s one of the primary intangibles that cause warriors to fight, or to quit fighting. It’s no less important for being intangible. Every competent military organization spends quite a bit of time, effort, and resources to building up and maintaining troop morale.

So. What effect does it have on our troop morale, if our press keeps telling them that they’re losing? Perhaps not much. But it does a very effective job at boosting the enemy’s morale — which makes them more willing to fight, makes it easier for them to recruit, and so on.

The bottom line is this: if an agent of the American press is consistently discouraging our troops, they are encouraging the enemy… and that emphatically qualifies as “aiding and abetting”. It might not be deliberate; I’m sure there are American journalists who don’t begin to understand how anti-war reporting could ever affect them.

It is the job of the justice system to help them understand this… by threatening harsh penalties for aiding and abetting the enemy. And to do that, we, as a society, need to remember how to pronounce the word ‘treason’ again.

Treason does exist, and it’s not for nothing that it’s a very serious crime. I, for one, would like every journalist to be encouraged to look up a good dictionary definition of ‘treason’… and to think carefully, on a regular basis, whether or not their work qualifies.

respectfully, Daniel in Brookline

There is always the old saw about not attributing to malice that which can be explained by stupidity - and make no mistake, the mass media is awash with incompetence.

However, the incompetence always seems to benefit the enemy, and we have plenty of damning statements from the journalists and media types themselves. Anyone with eyes in their head can see that much of this is intentional.

Much of the western media have their own agenda, mostly driven by domestic politics. Foreign policy only appears to matter to the extent that it can be used as ammunition against domestic adversaries - hence the short attention span when it comes to atrocities not committed by the west.

Make no mistake, Iraq would be a very different place today without all of the western reporting that vacillates between incendiary and hysterical coverage of the war effort and fawning coverage of the enemy.

The enemy in Iraq is playing to a western audience, incurring the wrath of the common Iraqi in a bloody attempt to convince the US public that we are losing in Iraq. Without the current behavior of the western media, they are lost and they know it.

THAT is how the war would be different. The military has not forgotten the lesson of Vietnam, and neither have the enemy. And as a former servicemember, I can tell you that we will never forget the lesson of this war, either.

Lower poll numbers for congress than Pres. Bush is another story not out there in the old media. Big story but no coverage.

“…since the media is no longer fulfilling their basic function…I have to read blogs. It pisses me off, because I had better things to do this decade…” Yes!

The media omits so much information it’s difficult to call it news.

While visiting my sister I had a conversation with her friend who does not have a computer and relies on the old media venue to gather information. For example, he has no idea what life under sharia law means as a dhimmitude, the treatment of gays and females living under Islamic theocracy, or the number of Muslims killed by Islamists. Not a clue as to the threat which really would hang him in the public square simply because he’s gay. But, he knows everything about Matthew Shepard except the fact that Shepard was murdered due to a bad drug deal gone down and not because he was gay.

It’s like we’re being Oprahfreyed or something.

A really great summary.

And, oddly enough, the part that rang most true for me is the note that I hate spending time having to be my own news service to get information. I really want to subscribe to a morning paper, read items of interest before work and during coffee breaks, hash it out a bit at with friends who also read the same paper, and generally feel like I know what’s going on. And I am in LA and Las Vegas (depending on what my boss wants me to accomplish) and I can’t do it in EITHER TOWN. Las Vegas is heavily dependent on AP wires, and I’ve deconstructed enough of their articles to be rather skeptical of what they report: the LA Times is dependent on a group of reporters who don’t seem to have much in the way of a critical perspective on things. (There are many blogs willing to point out the problems at the LA Times: suffice it to say that from a lousy newspaper that was pushed into a good one in the 70’s and 80’s, they’re back at lousy again.

I still like my version of how the day should go. I really wish there were papers that would make that possible: I and my friends would appreciate it. As it is, we all spend too much time online searching for the information.

Isn’t the “blame the media” meme just a little too convenient? After all, what is it you expect from the media? State control? This administration said this war would be over quickly, that the costs would be covered by Iraqi oil revenues, that we would be greeted as liberators, that there were WMD’s, that Saddam had restarted his nuclear weapons program, ect, ect, ect. The media did their part in the run up to the war. They painted opposition to the war as near treason. At what point do you hold those actually responsible for the policy and the implementation of that policy accountable for their failures? All the cheerleading in the universe will not mask the fact that there are limits to our projection of power. This administration made the decision early on that their view was unassailalbe and they were willing to embarrass and demonize those that held a different view. They created a climate that resulted in a very trunicated debate about this war. There was little if any discussion about what would happen post-saddam. The discussion at the time was about the reverse domino theory. Remember that one? Where we rolled through Iraq, took on Syria next and finished with Iran? Don’t hear much of that anymore do we. The limits to our power are now tangible and they have been exploited by the Mullahs in Iran for maximum advantage. That’s not the medias fault. That fault lies with the current administration and those that enable them.

A while back there was a big scandal that the Pentagon was paying reporters to report good news from Iraq. This was portrayed as a big scandal about the Pentagon.

Isn’t it much more of a story that the Military actually has to PAY to have their good deeds reported?

The terrorists do THEIR JOB - blow stuff and people up - and it gets reported very reliably by the media.

Our military does THEIR JOB - train soldiers, rebuild schools and towns - and they have to pay to have their news reported.

Good job, media. Doing great work. Keep it up.

My sense is those who tell the lie and those who believe the liar are the ones diminished in a transaction, not those are lied about. If anything, the victim gains strength, especially if they do not reply, save a simple denial. Credibility is not about who spins best.

I remember hearing the reports about New Orleans and thinking “how terrible, how low we have fallen.” And then kicked myself a few days later when I thought to myself “You fool! Why to you believe the MSM now? You discount to near nothing everything they say about other topics.”

I’m convinced the same dynamic applies to the polls. The people know they are being played and play along knowing it’s not they who are diminished (Rumsfeld’s trust that american’s are well-“centered” - i.e. intelligent, slow-to-anger, and a thoughtful people). And it’s their opposition which will suffer the most as they fool only themselves about what values and strategies are most appealing to the electorate.

I think the Media learned in the 70’s that they can have power. They feel they can control other people with the information they present (or don’t present). The MSM now believes that it can control a president or politician by the message they provide. I think it comes down to a control issue. Some of it is sensationalism, but that is an extension of their bravdo - “Look, we can make people riot! Support this new law or we’ll incite revolt!” - something like that. We can all see the result of the MSM’s actions. The question is “why?”, and I think the answer is power and control. The men who run the modern media mega-companies want to be able to control society as they see fit. For the past 30 years, they have been succeeding. Now that the ‘net and blogs have spawned, they are losing. As a power-hungry control-freak begins to lose, they take more and more drastic steps to regain their control. “The tighter you close your grip, the more that squeezes between your fingers.” For examples of how the media is attempting to control, consider these events: Media is requesting that “reporters” have special designation wrt the First Amendment and reporting National Security issues. There has been significant decrease in freedom of speech via the McCain-Finegold act. Why wasn’t this opposed more strongly?

They want power. They will stop at nothing to have it.

Interesting. Why don’t we go 3 years with the press mainly doing good news, and see who’s right.

Spot on. The American aren’t doing real news reporting, and in part their reporters are simply too poorly trained to do so. Their approach to every war is: is this another Vietnam? is it? is it? is it? They were into this mode within five minutes after the bombs started falling in Afghanistan, and did this every second of the brilliant American victory in the spring of 2003, and only stopped when Saddam Hussein’s statue fell in Baghdad.

Then they waited two weeks and started it up again.

Thing about talking about “the media” in such generalized terms is that it can easily miss the complexity of the reality. If you are talking about television and popular media generalizations can be made. This is because the audiences are so broad. However, if you don’t like what is on your plate, change your diet. Turn off your TV and watch Democracy Now for a month. Check out blogs for a month. Read a variety of press to get a better idea of what is really happening. Make up your own mind as to what to believe, what to disregard. The more things start to make sense, the more likely you are learning something.

It started in the 70’s? Yup.

Any specific event? Watergate.

Not that I’m laying all the balme at Tricky Dicky’s door or graveside…

This is when the role of the driller-killer-journalist began. If the subject of your investigation didn’t have a terrible guilty dark secret then there was no story.

Recently, some of the sheen wore off, when we heard who Deep Throat really was…

Robert Redford, of all people, addressed this in a recent Washington Post article -

“Did ‘All the President’s Men’ really change journalism? Did the film impact anybody but maybe a bunch of young journalists who got into journalism for the wrong reasons because they thought there was glamour there? I don’t know.”

The quote and the article are on my site as part of my Oscars post, about the role of Participant Productions in this year’s nominated films. But it applies equally to that toxic moment in the ‘70’s when reporters became journalists, and PLAYERS instead of OBSERVERS.

I’m glad to see more discussion, but we are still short on details. A lot of the discussion focuses on personal outrage at how bad the MSM has become. That is understandable — I don’t like the MSM, either: nobody does — but how we feel about the media personally should not affect the war effort in Iraq directly. Sometimes it seems to me as though war supporters imagine they are cheering spectators at a sporting event, frustrated because they think if everyone else were cheering too, it would change the outcome of the game. But I find that improbable.

The two best point raised, I think, are troop morale and enemy morale. I have written about the troop morale issue before. I don’t doubt that troop morale matters, or that it is easier to have good morale when you feel you are winning and on the right side. My question has to do with how, specifically, the war would be different if the media were painting a rosier picture.

If media’s effect on troop morale is hurting the war effort, then there must be specific things the military is not doing as successfully as it could, and those things must be influenced by morale. I would like to know what those things are. I think this argument may be more applicable in a different sort of war. But in this war, there is no front line. My sense is that it’s more about vigilance and survival. It’s not the case that we know where and who the enemy is, and with greater resolve we can defeat them. It is more like a deadly game of hide-and-seek, in which trying harder won’t necessarily yield greater results. But if I’m wrong, I would hope someone could tell me, specifically, what our troops could be doing better with higher morale, and how that would change the war.

The other point, about enemy morale, is more cogent, I think, but I’m still not convinced that the media is having a huge effect on the insurgency. Is the average Iraqi streetfighter watching CNN or reading the NY Times? I doubt it, so how does the effect actually work? And why is it that things weren’t going any better two years ago, when the media’s picture of the war was much more rosy?

I suppose this makes more sense to someone who sees this war in very binary terms: it’s us (the good guys) against them (the bad guys), and all the bad guys are working in concert reach Osama Bin Laden’s vision. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think that the situation is much more complicated than that. We are probably facing a lot of people who have no idea what the US media are saying.

I don’t see things in binary terms. It could be that parts of the insurgency are very clued in to the US media, and that they draw some morale from the negative picture. But I don’t think that white-washing the media would make the insurgency go away, or even hurt it in a way that would make the US troops’ job much easier. I think many people are fighting because they resent the occupation — period. There is nothing the military will ever do to change their minds about this.

What if the US were invaded by some foreign enemy? Would we all be watching TV and surfing the Internet, looking for some indication of how the people back at home felt about their invasion? Or would we be fighting back any way we can, regardless of how it seemed to be going? I think it’s the latter, and I don’t see why Iraqis would be any different.

Ah.

You have your own set of biases, which in part come from the same media you don’t think matters. That’s part of why some of us are frustrated with the media. In order to have a conversation with someone like you, we first have to correct all the things that you “know” that are wrong.

It’s not a simple as just that the insurgents are fighting against a foreign invader. For one thing, not all the insurgents are Iraqis. I think an Iraqi put it best: “The Iraqis live between the hammer of the insurgents and the anvil of the US troops.”

You’re also missing the whole issue of “ally morale”. Germany aids the US behind the scenes, while publically complaining about the war. If the war was portrayed in more fair terms in Western media, that wouldn’t be necessary. Similarly, European democracies wouldn’t put up with recruiting for the insurgents in their own countries.

For that matter, the media has a double standard, and that dramatically affects the war. Anything we do wrong is an atrocity. Anything the insurgents do seems to be given a free pass.

For all the whining about Guantanamo (and don’t get me wrong, I think its a good thing to hold the US to high standards), I think that the media should rag ten times more stringently on the insurgents. The message should be that if you want the rest of the world to take you seriously, you have to fight as soldiers, not barbarians.

That is, I would be much happier with the MSM if they portrayed the insurgents to be as vicious as they really are, without romanticizing them as resisters to foreign invaders.

So how would the war be different Jon? That’s such a big answer I don’t know if I can type it without my fingers bleeding.

War is complicated, and there are plenty of things that are hard to get right. When the media finds a cause du jour to beat up the administration, and it turns out that the administration was actually doing the right thing, but then has to do the wrong thing because the right thing is hard to explain, but the wrong thing is simple, then the media is hurting the war effort, purely for their own gain.

So Jon, are Strykers good or bad?

According to the Washington Post, they’re bad.

According to the soldiers they’re good. They could use some tweaks, but soldiers are never 100% happy with any tool of war.

If a congressmen is sitting in a committe meeting, and Strykers come up, how is he going to vote if the Washington Post is in front of him? Especially when certain members of a certain party seem determined to distrust the military at every step, in part because that’s what the media tells them to think?

Of course I have biases. Who doesn’t? But I am a thoughtful person. I don’t just buy into what I read or hear without applying critical thought. To tell you the truth, I don’t pay much attention to the MSM, and I certainly don’t take what they say as gospel.

I don’t have any romantic ideas about the insurgency, either. But I do try to understand their motivations as best as I can, because that is key to actually making the world a safer place. And I assume that those motivations are at least somewhat recognizably human, even if the resulting actions are often brutally inhumane. War itself is inherently inhumane, and that includes a lot of what we do. We tell ourselves that our benevolent motivations make our inhumane acts acceptable, but why should the people in Iraq (or the rest of the world) agree? If we are serious about bringing democracy to Iraq, we will have to get serious about listening to what Iraqis want — and most of them seem to want us out, ASAP. If you think that has nothing to do with the insurgency, I can’t understand why that is.

As for the outside elements, we have always been told by the Bush camp that Al Qaeda members are crazy, hate-filled zealots who want to destroy American life at all costs. So why should it matter to them whether the occupation is going well or not? According to Bush, they are going to attack us when and where ever they can. They don’t need encouragement from the US media.

You also seem to be forgetting that US allies have their own news-gathering apparati. I seriously doubt that Brits and Germans watch American TV for news about Iraq. Their own media are probably better than ours, since they are not as commercially driven as ours — which, as we have already agreed, is the biggest problem with our MSM media.

I have seen no evidence that US media reports are causing Congress to cut support for the war effort. If you are aware of a real example of that — not just a hypothetical one — please let me know. As far as I can tell, Congress is still controlled by Bush’s party and they stand behind him fully in the war.

I don’t need you to write a novel, painting a detailed picture of how the war would be different if the MSM media were better. Please, just address one or two SPECIFIC, REAL-LIFE examples. I still haven’t seen that, from anyone.

Ok, so one thing you mentioned is that “all the money for the war effort has been stolen by contractors”.

But that’s just not true. I know you believe it, and I know there has been plenty of coverage to that extent in the media, but its just not true.

So why would anyone want to become a defense contractor when their profit is limited to 2-7% over cost?

So the only people who are defense contractors are bloated, bureaucratic companies who are willing to put up with all the hassle. So ironically, all this blather in the MSM ends up costing the taxpayers more, and actually giving the troops less resources to fight the war.

The Pentagon doesn’t pay $10,000 for a hammer, they pay $10 like everyone else. It costs them $10,000 for a hammer because they spec it to death, buy them, store them, ship them, instead of just letting the local supply seargent have a Home Depot credit card.

Yet how can anyone reform this process that’s so full of CYA? Almost all corruption in our government can be traced to the previous reform effort.

That’s a real world example. Another one coming in a different post.

Personally, I didn’t get the idea that Al-Queda were hate filled zealots from reading the media, or the Bush administration stuff about them.

I got that from following their actions and reading their own websites. Their actions are pointless expressions of hatred with no rhyme or reason for the most part.

That’s one of the things I find most annoying about the free pass the insurgents are getting. Perhaps some of them have true motivations, but I suspect that those are the people who formed political parties, not militias…

The other thing you’re missing jon is that the hostile media creates an environment that make a hard job harder. You want direct cause and effect but that’s not always how the world works.

Does it matter if you have one beer before driving? Not much no.

Does it matter if you have one beer before driving in a blizzard? Yes.

Anyways, the point of the original post was actually that I mostly blame them for being incompetent. They’re definitely making MY job harder as a US citizen, and I can easily show you direct cause and effect there.

You seem to be arguing that because there are layers between the proletariat and the decision makers that somehow that filters out the media.

I’m not so sure that’s true.

For one thing, if you search back through my blog, you’ll find out that I’m the only one who knew that the Pentagon was going to pull down troops in 2006. Yet in the media, Kerry and McCain, two people who presumably have direct access to better information proceeded to have a bitch-fitch about just that.

Given that, I truly can’t believe that somehow Congress, et. al. is truly insulated from public opinion and the media who crafts same.

For that matter look through some milblogs about the “mom effect”, which is what recruiters call when someone is willing to enlist, only to have their mom or some other family member talk them out of it, to a large part because of media lies.

I just think that if one really believes the media is hampering the war effort, one should be able to point to some kind of direct effect. Otherwise, there is no solid basis for blaming the failures of the war on the media. That is just shooting the messenger.

I have never been one to defend the media or say they are doing a good job. I have as many problems with the media as anyone. Granted, covering the war in Iraq is a difficult assignment. It’s not like they can just wander around and talk to anyone they like. They are embedded, restricted, and endangered by extreme violence that has no predictible pattern. The brutality of the insurgency you write about is part of why the media coverage is difficult to do well. Given that kind of environment, it is much easier to sit back and report statistics — like deaths and attacks — and the statistics make the war look pretty bad. Even if you think we are doing tons of amazing things in Iraq, the basic statistics suggest that there are serious limits to our success.

But I have a hard time seeing what you think the media could do better. Where do you get the information that makes you so sure they are wrong, or even lying? What are your criteria for good reporting? I guess I just don’t see a lot of stories that demonize American troops or valorize the insurgency. For all their shortcomings, most reporters know it’s not their job to make moral judgements and hit you over the head with them. Sometimes I think a lot of people just want the news to pander to whatever pre-conceived opinions they already have — i.e. “If it makes me unhappy, it must be wrong.”

If bad things are happening in Iraq, we need to know about them. I’m sorry if people feel that hurts the war effort, but democracy was not designed to be the most efficient fighting machine possible. Fascism is much better in that respect, because the press is not allowed to deviate from the party line. But democracy is what we are supposed to be fighting for, even if it makes fighting more difficult.

Direct effects:

• Recruiting is harder
• Aid from allies is harder
• insurgent recruiting is easier

But you keep pushing an argument I’m not interested in; I’m more interested in how the media could improve their own performance. It’s perfectly permissible to shoot the messenger if he continually garbles the message.

How the media could improve:

• Connect with more soldiers to report the good and the bad of the war.
• Connect with more Iraqi citizens to report the good and the bad of the war.

Things where you and I will have to disagree:

• From September to now, the basic statistics on the war have been improving. Click Brookings in the sidebar to see all my posts on the subject.
• Democracy is the most efficient fighting machine possible actually. America wins wars because of her sargents not her generals.

Things where you and I are in violent agreement:

• The media isn’t necessarily biased for/against the war, as much as they are biased towards conflict. They “sex up” the news more then they slant it. I call it glass 5% empty reporting. My point of view is that we started with a glass 75% empty, and we’re now 75% full. That’s a lot of progress, but its not something the media has covered well.
• If bad things are happening in Iraq, we need to know about them. I just think we need to know about the good things too, because we need a complete picture. What would you think of your hometown if all you ever read was the police blotter?

A comment I got from a local TV reporter was that he felt the big media was reporting on Iraq like they report on local news. While its a big deal if there’s a local fire, people know that its a temporary thing. With Iraq, in order to make sense of any story, you need cultural & historical perspective to go along with the story along with some other news as well.