Bob Owens, at Confererate Yankee, has kind of owned the Scott Beauchamp/TNR story all along. Today, he posts an interview that – if valid and correct – moves the bar from ’embarassing for TNR’ to ‘devastating’.
Q: TNR also claimed that, “the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants ‘to protect his privacy.'” At the time those statements were made by TNR’s editors on August 10, were they factually accurate? To your knowledge, have the editors of The New Republic spoken with Scott Thomas Beauchamp since August 10, and if so, when? Does Scott Beauchamp currently have the capability to speak to The New Republic if he so desires, and release all documentation relating to the investigation if he so desires?
A: The statements made by TNR on Aug. 10 about Beauchamp’s availability were accurate- given the investigation’s status, he was not authorized to conduct interviews with media outlets. However, as soon as the investigation concluded in mid-August, he was free to speak openly if he so desired. He rejected interview requests from Confederate Yankee and the Weekly Standard, but did in fact speak to TNR on the 7th of September, while Maj. John Cross conducted a separate interview with TNR roughly one week later.
Pvt. Beauchamp also canceled scheduled interviews with Newsweek and the Washington Post after speaking to TNR.
My own takes on l’affaire Beauchamp have been somewhat mixed; but I have felt all along that TNR wasn’t playing it’s cards as openly as they should to retain their credibility.
I dropped my online subscription to TNR in the middle of this because I was just not comfortable paying for a product with neither quality control nor apparent concern about quality – and the ongoing silence and half-steps by TNR have left me uncomfortable in both areas.
And now this, if true – the notion that TNR spoke with Beauchamp a month after posting ‘their final word’ and a month ago – and that they are still silent about it – is something that makes me wonder what, exactly, they are thinking. Their reputation relies more on being seen as searching after truth than on having attained it. I fear they will wind up with neither here.
Ditto the kudos to Confederate Yankee.
TNR is still stuck at complaining that the Army will not illegally release information about a non-judicial disciplinary proceeding to them. While blatantly ignoring the fact that their boy Beauchamp could give them that information, but has apparently refused to do so.
The people who make fake “Mondo” documentaries about cannibalism have more respect for their audience than TNR does.
TNR is adjusting its message to suit a new anti-war readership. Are they making a corresponding adjustment to their editorial standards, and if so, what does that say about TNR’s assessment of its new customers?
He was free to “speak openly” once the investigation was concluded?
He’s still in the Army, isn’t he?
Isn’t the simplest explanation here that TNR just doesn’t want to risk getting Scott Beauchamp into any more trouble?
No, the simplest explanation is that the TNR in specific and the industry in general isn’t in the business of telling the truth. They are in the business of shaping the debate. That’s an entirely different thing. And though completely dishonest ( considering their claims of objectivity) perhaps wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t constantly seem to be shaping the debate in favor of those who kill women and children with great pride. (Burned Sunis by the AP, Haditha massacre, The president of Iran as a resonable actor, kite flying happiness in Iraq pre war, Hamas and Fatah as actors for peace, feauxtography, Diane Saywers’s Kissy face interview with Assad, Mike Wallace’s kissy face interview with the President of Iran, Dan Rather’s kissy face interview with Saddam Hussein pre-war, the NYT questionable exposure of vaious intel secrets, plastic turkey, claims that the Administration is crminal, the CNN sniper video, the misreporting of the situation in Basra, the cover up of Al Qaeda atrocities, General Betrayus, chinging gI’s editorial and thier letters home to amke them appear to asy things they didn’t in fact say, and so forth and so on. And that’s in the past couple of years. If you want to go all the way back to Walter Duranty and work your way forward it gets more interesting still.)
The sad thing is, other journalists, journalists who claim to know better silently watch it all every day and play along.
If there are any journalists out there I’d be interested to hear why.
A blanket smear, corvan?
IIRC, the tales Beauchamp wrote about were rather mild, and the first charge the right threw at him was that he didn’t exist (shades of Jamail Husein). And just like Jamil Hussein, it turns out Beauchamp does indeed exist.
Other than one wrong location, I don’t see any proof that he was lying, or that TNR acted inappropriately.
There’s no law that says news organizations have to reply to charges flung at them by the right.
And seeing as the right will claim victory no matter what the facts turn out to be(see:Jamail Hussein), I doubt TNR will bother again.
Not smears Alphie facts, and please do not take this personally. I mean you no ill will and have nothing against you. But the press’s role ( and I mean the way they have consciously shaped the debate concerning) the crimes of Stalin and Saddam and Castro and Pol Pot and Al Qaeda and Arafat and Mao and Mugabe and the janjaweed is a serious, serious business. A serious person needs to take the other side of this. Not you.
Ridculous denials of the plain facts before you and personal insults aren’t going to advance this anywhere. But it will serve to convince the rest of us that you and the press are no longer worth reasoning with, but instead to be completely ignored. I’d rather not see that happen.
I also want to understand how the people in the press view what they have done regarding this matter. And how they justify their behaviour.
Do the ethics they constantly tell the rest of us about actually mean anything? (We all ready know that the fact checking claims were a transparent flasehood.) Or is it all an elaborate con job designed to ensure their politcal power?
I have attempted to convince myself that the press’s current misbehaviour was the result of their hatred of George Bush, no more no less. But I’m not sure I can make myself believe that any more. Did Walter Duranty hate George Bush. Did the press cover up the evils Castro unleased on Cuba becuase they hated Jack Kennedy. Did they hate every American president from World War Two through the seventies so viciously that they were forced to cover up what Mao did to the Chinese? Did they really engage in the feauxtography nonsense because they hate George Bush? Could their indulgence of the Jenin false hood be laid totaly at the feet of BDS? Darfur and Rawanda can we really lay the press’s failure to report these things forcefully at the feet of BDS. Can we lay the press’s failure to report the role of UN peace keepers in Rapes and other atrocities to BDS? Did the oil for food scandal receive a press emabrgo strictly becuase of BDS? I fear there is a deeper more ugly moral perversion at work here. I hope I’m worng. Someone explain it to me.
Uh, Alphie?
About Jamil Hussein… he doesn’t exist. He’s just a pseudonym.
corvan,
The New York Times(remember Judy Miller?), The Washington Post, the broadcast news outfits were among the biggest cheerleaders for our pre-emptive war against Iraq.
No Alphie, this isn’t about your Daddy issues with the current occupant of the White House. Nor is it about short term political gain. Repubs and Dems will come and go, our system ensures (properly so) that the press will be with us forever. The question is why has the press purposely shaped the Anmerican national debate so as to ensure the continued presence and influence of people such as Stalin and Mao and Hussein and Castro and Arafat on the world stage?
And is there any shame at all among members of the press concering the death toll their support of each of these men has helped account for?
In a world where technology is developing at an exponential rate the refusal to report factually on the proclivities of people who murder indiscrminately and ambitiously is a deadly oversight, not just locally but globally. Why does the press continue to make it? There has to be a journalist out there some where…
corvan,
If the American press is so powerful it could have singlehandidly toppled Stalin, Mao, Saddam, Arafat, etc, why should we even bother with the U.S. military?
And if right-wing blogs want to show they are interested in the truth, maybe thaey should join in the investigation into Ciara Durkin’s murder.
No, Alphie this isn’t about the military power of the press. It is about its moral power. It’s power to convince people of what is right and acceptable. The intentional whitewashing of Maos’ crimes and Stalin’s crimes and Saddam’s crimes and Arafat’s crimes creates a situation where no American president can ever touch them or even have much to say about them other than “I can work with him.” The press cannot over throw these people. They can merely help ensure that they are never overthrown, and that they maintina power even greater than that their militaries afford them.
Now I am happy to see you agree that Mao, Saddam, Stalin and especially Arafat should have been over thrown. I appreciate your support in that, but still you aren’t looking at any of this very maturely.
Instead of seeing the press as an equalizer an insittuion that will aid the small and the weak in their struggle against those who would murder and enslave them (Mao, Saddam, Castro, Arafat) you see it as a club to beat your political enemies with. Sadly I fear that is how they see themselves as well.
So I ask you as a friend and in a spirit of brotherhood can you go find me a grown up member of the press who can explain to me what they’ve been up to
And it occurs to me that moral power used to benefit those who are amoral is a sad thing.
Corvan,
You certainly have some interesting ideas about the press and its power.
But, I think if you look back at the wars America managed to win, you’ll find the press back then carried tales from our troops that were far more horrific than anything Beauchamp wrote in TNR.
That the right now tries to censor soldier’s tales from the front that go against their “morals” says more about the right than the press.
No Alphie, this isn’t about war reporting. This is about the consistent whitewashing and cover up of the intentional slaughter of tens of millions of people in China, in Cambodia, in the Ukraine, in Africa and in Saddam’s dungeons. All of these things occured before this war and no one censored the press but the press. I’m trying to discuss the role of a moral press in a free society. You’re trying to garner some political advantage for your side. Again, I appreciate your support regarding Arafat and all the rest, but you contributions as far as the press goes have been nil. Is there a journalist out there a journalist of any stripe or any back ground that is willing to discuss any of this? I thought that journalists were supposed to communicate?
Is your next book deal or your popularity at whatever coffee house you attend really more important than the lives of all these people? Or is there something I’ve missed.
Should I take it that journalists don’t read Winds of Change?
Okay, let’s try something for the people that aren’t journalists. Have any of you out there that correspond with a journalist, whether they work at the Weekly Standard or the NRO or the NYT or FOX or MSNBC ever appraoched one of these questions with them? What response did you get? Not to pick on the Times but I believe they still claim Duranty’s Pulitzer. (Funny, Marion Jones gave her medals back and will probably go to prison. She never harmed soul one, other than herself.) What has the rest of the media done about this? Any one? Any one at all?
Does anyone think that maybe they should talk with a journalist about this? Or that it would do any good at all to try?
Anyone on the left or the right?
So maybe the problem is much, much bigger than the TNR, eh?
And maybe the problem starts in the mirror.
The problem with TNR is that they have an agenda and a religion, like all members of the Press, which they push constantly.
The religion (and agenda) is: AMERICA is always bad, AMERICAN POWER is evil, Americans *themselves* are evil, and all other leaders, particularly America’s enemies, are forces for good. Related to this is the “folly” of any use what so ever of American military power, coupled with the always-working efficacy of America’s enemies military power. Ending with a religious belief in the power of NGO’s, the UN, the EU, and “talk” and “negotiations.”
It’s in other words, a never-ending episode of the West Wing. Where people walk and talk really fast, and end up solving genocide by making a really big speech at a really big meeting.
The reason for this is obvious. The press are drones. Upper class scavengers or would-be parasites like Beauchamp. As such they can only exist in a world where the Average American is reduced to serf-dom and they are raised to some medieval guild-hood or priesthood. In many ways the Press resembles the Dark Ages, pre-Celibacy priesthood.
Jim Rockford: The religion (and agenda) is: AMERICA is always bad, AMERICAN POWER is evil, Americans themselves are evil, and all other leaders, particularly America’s enemies, are forces for good.
You obviously do not read that magazine.
_Other than one wrong location, I don’t see any proof that he was lying, or that TNR acted inappropriately._
Well, a news organization has a responsibility to prove the truth – not get enough information that proves he wasn’t lying.
When you look at the verification that was done, it drives me nuts – did they actually contact 5 people who are deployed with him, and had them all verify it as well, and then have them all backtrack? Those are the people I want to hear from, because without that they never would have put this out there.
My guess is they’ll just lay low for a year, and try not to do anything too disruptive.
Whether or not we destroy the crediblity of TNR no longer matters. It never did. Whether or not Republicans or Democrats win the next election really doesn’t matter either. Show me a major policy change since 2006. Whether the media makes a concerted desperate, loud effort to stop the next genocide rather than plays along matter alot. To do that they have to bring the same fervor to covering it they did to covering Abu Grahib, or Haditha, or the burning Suni story. What are the people that have read this thread doing to ensure that? Alphie? Jim? Michael? Bob? Marc? The rest of you?
Is the esteeem you are held in among the media class really this important to you? Why? Are the reasons personal or professional?
These aren’t rhetorical questions. I really want to know.
Don’t feed the troll. Alphie’s moved from blog to blog trolling, and when he gets owned enough times he will move to another. He’s spammed Patterico from months, and now hes moved over here. He won’t seriously engage you or even acknowledge valid points, he is not to be taken seriously.
I didn’t want to leave any one out. Though it looks like a whole bunch of folks want to be left out. Want to be left out pretty fiercely.
Pretty fiercely indeed. And the beat will go on, and on and on.
Playing ‘gotcha’ huh? Wow, sure can’t do that with this administration!
Anyways who am I thinking about:
# He declared managing the country was “impossible.â€
# The Arab officials employed by the British-backed King Feisal were “incompetent.â€
# “[N]o progress has been made in developing the oil,†he said.
# He worried that Turkey was increasing its influence over Iraq.
# He concluded, “at present we are paying eight millions [in] pounds Sterling a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.†That’s the equivalent of half a billion dollars today, says Ms. Monaghan.
Why none other than Godwin inspiring, Project for the American Century idol Winston Churchill!!
Thank you a, your argument (that the brown people have whatever misery the strong men throw their way coming) is understood, noted and appreciated.
Now, is there a grown up journalist any where on the web who’d like to express a view?
Or how about a member of the armed forces. You’re the ones who get sent to these places after the rest of us have ignored them into dangerous blood soaked, hell holes.
You’re the ones who have to straighten them out after the talkers and the writers have all worked their magic.
You’re the ones who ende up getting featured prominently in the “General Betray Us” ads.
You’re the one who get prosecuted for the Haditha massacres. You’re the ones all these journalists claim to care about so passionately. Any of you wonder about all this?
I’m not fortunate enough to be a parent. I don’t know. So I’ll ask. How about those of you who have children in harms way or are about to have children in harms way? How do you feel about this? Has the media’s behaviour here been honorable and reasonable? And are those who slavishly seek access to the media honoring you and your children with their silence on these matters?
Does it seem to anyone out there at all that the journalists and bloggers who have supported this war (and even those who don’t) owe it to the kids who are fighting it to call the media on these matters? You know, so it doesn’t happen again and again and again. Isn’t that what supporting the troops is about?
No?
No, we all know the byline, it’s not the soldiers fault if Iraq fails, it’s CERTAINLY not the administrations fault it fails: it’s the fickle American public’s fault. Vietnam II
I’m glad a brought up Vietnam. Any one remeber Pol Pot? Any one remeber what Pol Pot did after the war? It’s okay a, I understand your postion, the Cambodians had it coming. But everyone else out there, do any of you ever wonder why the press has always gone sort of light on Popl Pot’s crimes? Any one ever wonder if the press’s refusal to look into those crimes contributed to the Interantional Communities failure to do one thing about them? Anyone care to compare and contrast the treatment Pol Pot has recieved in the press with the treatment the Haditha Marines have received in the press, or General Petreus? Anyone ever wonder why the press never looked into what the Hell all those boat people were running from when they got out of Nam after the war? Anyone ever wonder why the press never wondered that regarding all the cuban refugees?
Anyone ever wonder how the press seemed to miss the memo that said Haditha might be an AQ set up, but found and trumpted everything else they reported? Any one at all? Is there a journalist in the house?
How about some one that wants to be a journalist, is there any one like that out there who will weigh in?
Corvan, please focus your posting. Treating threads like your own personal Twitter / stream of consciousness is a good way to get banned. WoC welcomes substantive content, and you’ve shown yourself capable of it. Please review the “comments policy.”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/003367.php
#36, directed at no one identifiable, is exactly the kind of post that is deprecated.
— Nort, in Marshal mode.
NM,
Sorry. I don’t think I have anything else to add, anyway. I’ll be on my way. Before I go though, I’ll ask you what do you think. Should the media rouse itself to comment on its role in the cover up of Stalin in the Ukraine. Should it ask itself why it hasn’t brought more focus to Pol Pot or any of the rest? The floor is yours.
I hope the question was focused enough, Marshal. 🙂
I think corvan’s question especially at #35 is very much on point. The answer is that outside the tiny circle of pro-war blogs who’ve made this a cause celebre, no-one, not even pro-war journalists, cares about this pathetic beatup any more.
Thanks John. That’s the one I would love to see a journalist answer. Shouldn’t journalism as a whole address what Duranty did, and the relative silence with which it has greeted to the crimes of Pol Pot and all the rest? If it doesn’t won’t these things happen again and again?
Sorry NM, I hung around. I really want to see someone answer this. You included. I want to understand why the media will not touch these subjects at all.
And NM, not to be obstinate but if that simple question is unfocused twittering. I’m going to twitter. You might as well ban me now.
Quiggin says nobody cares. If there’s a better indication that Baghdad Diarist = Bullshit … actually, there are better indications, but this one is pretty good.
I don’t think anyone else has to do any damage to the TNR’s credibility. They’ve done enough on their own. Further I think it’s clear that they ruined their credibility by attmepting to shape the debate, rather than by simply reporting. If shaping the debate is SOP in the news business, and it certianly appears it always has been. (And that they are proud of it) Then why doesn’t the media have some responsibility for the way they shaped the debate around Stalin’s crimes, and around Pol Pot’s crimes and around Saddam’s torture chamber (CNN was in country at the time with the offical blessing of the Iraq government) or around Arafat’s crimes or around the things Castro has done in Cuba? Will a journalist please answer this for me? I don’t know how I can make things any more substantive than that, and I don’t know why no journalist on the left the right or in the center will answer it.
And if I need to focus that question at a particular journalist, blogger or person, Nortius please tell me. I will.
Glen, how about you? I’m not picking on you. You just happen to be around and Nortius says I have to be focused. Do you think that the media shaped the debate regarding what Stalin did in the Urkriane and Castro in Cuba and Arafat in Palestine, and do you think the media bears any responisiblity at all for the way they shaped it?
I’m asking the same question of you John, and you as well Nortius.
Glen, what puzzles me most about this is why anyone would care about the credibility of TNR which had already been shot to pieces by its uncritical acceptance of the lies told in support of the Iraq war (not to mention earlier fiascoes like the Glass business). Watching two groups who have both utterly, mindbogglingly wrong about everything to do with the Iraq war fight a lengthy battle over whether a dog got run over or not has to be the most bizarre spectacle I’ve seen for some time.
I did a post on this issue a little while ago – “specifically mentioning John Q and Beauchamp”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/009725.php
The issue isn’t the specific credibility of TNR (which I wish were higher) or of Beauchamp (which is more his concern than mine), but the liberation of memes which the media monoculture immediately absorb, reproduce, and propagate. Which in turn, resets the public perception – as it did here in Los Angeles during the media-driven gang frenzy of the late 1980’s and 1990’s.
Amusingly, there was a TV discussion of this yesterday, in which Chris Cuomo and Howard Kurtz talk explicitly about shaping public opinion:
Yes, there are a lot of ‘facts’ which need to be filtered and assembled into information and stories; and the selection and assembly matter a lot. And the decision to frame the stories in a particular way clearly has an explicit impact.
So while the credibility of TNR as an institution isn’t any great shakes, combating the effort of the monoculture to frame the war in a way that meets their preferences – in, say finding ‘a defining atrocity’ for the war – seems like a good thing. It would be good if we all had a good understanding of the facts as they are in Iraq and of history to let us place those facts into context.
Sadly, in the larger society we really have neither, which does make things a lot more difficult.
A.L.
From the same show:
Kurtz, who has written a book on the subject, asserted, “I believe that these newscasts in 2005 and 2006 played the biggest single role in helping to turn public opinion against the war.”
“January of 2004”:http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq2.htm was the last time a majority of Americans approved of Bush’s handling of the Iraq War.
Who is doing the “framing” here?
Firsy of all, who’s Ciara Durkin, and why should we care. Second,
Churchill had few faults but one of
them was consenting to the occupation of Mesopotamia; the invasion occurred when he was chief of the Admiralty; and not changing the essential nature of the regime; ignoring the growing
Shia majority as well as the large
role of the Kurds, which provoked the thawra (revolt) of 1920. In his role as Colonial Secretary he was in charge of redrawing the three Ottoman vilayets to reshape the Kurdish vilayet of Mosul, in order to curry favor with the French, where ironically the first oil was found in Kirkuk in 1927. chopping out the Basra vilayet to favor the AlSabah’s of Kuwait’s claims. It was Sir Percy Cox, who along with St. John Philby that backed Ibn Saud who stood by while the Hashemites backed by Lawrence took the fight to the Turks. Not unlike the role of the Saud favored afghan groups over the efforts of Massoud and the future Northern Alliance. The result could have been anticipated; a Sunni tribal oligarchy essentially stole the country’s birthrite, protected by a like minded army that turned to the fascistic Golden Square movement when they had the chance.
Will anyone understand the historical record reagarding the media’s coverage and framing of various atrocities if none of us metion it, comment on it, or answer questions about it?
Further doesn’t ignoring the media’s role in framing these prior murder sprees ensure that we will be watching all of this happen again. Atroctiy, media minimization of atrocity, strong man coming to power as a result of atrocity or becuase of atrocity, acts of naked aggression against strong man’s neighbors and United States interests, entry of United States amrines, complaints of media and ensuing belittling of marine’s efforts, regional instability requiring extended presence of United States Marines. Rewind, repeat.
Isn’t this all a continuing loop we will never break out of until we come to grips with the media’s behaviour regarding these matters? And doesn’t our refusal to even talk about it mean we kick the can down the road to the next group of soldiers who will be shot at abroad and attacked by large portions of the media and the public at home?
And to focus the questions more clearly, in the transcript that AL mentions above two members of the media pretty much acknowledge the media’s role in turning public preceptions on the war. Doesn’t that conversation seem to also aknowledge that the media could like wise have turned the public prerceptions of the Ukrainian holocaust seventy years ago, or the Cambodian holocaust half a century later, on on Arafat’s villiany after that, or on Saddam’s own depredations pre-war.
Does the media bear no responsiblity at all for the misuse of its moral power? Is it free to use its moral power to bolster the credibilty of these men and groups who create these crises. Then condemn those who make attempts to fix said crises later as criminals?
I know I have been a scold, but I just don’t think that these are questions that are going to go away (or that should go away), and I fear that the media’s refusal to come to grips with it is an indication that they suspect they would not like the answer they would arrive at if they did.
And understand I mean no insult to anyone present or who has passed through this thread. You are all better and braver people than I ( a committed and life long coward) will ever be. But I have focused these questions very clearly, I think and asked several people indivdually and in group to answer them. Why none of you including those who asked me to focus the questions and address them more clealry) have made any attempt to answer any of them is something that only you know, and that casual readers can only guess at. Honestly, is that what you really want, and is that the way all of you maintain blogs are supposed to work?
corvan:
You’re kind of all over the map, here. So I’ll just jump in anywhere.
The MSM’s reporting on the woes of the world reflects its demographic bias – which is that of the white liberal Columbia SoJ graduate. They are interested in how world events effect American domestic politics, period. They are not interested in foreign policy per se; like the Democratic party that 90% of them belong to, they are in fact anti-foreign policy.
That was what used to set TNR apart – it used to be a magazine for serious foreign policy Democrats. Used to be, used to be.
Walter Duranty got away with what he did – got a prize for it, in fact – because most Americans had no idea what was going on in Russia and didn’t particularly care. The New York Times is not in the business of informing people, it’s in the business of making comforting noises to itself.
Thanks and not ot be a bother, but what about later, what about the questions I asked in comment #55 and #56. Am I totally off base with those?
Again I’m trying to stay as focused as I can. Am I totally off base with my questions/assertions in comments #55 and #56. I’m focusing on comments #55 and #56. I really want to know if I am off base. and if I am off base, why am I off base?
corvan, give it a break for a bit – when you’re 40% or more of a thread, you’re monologuing – and you know what happens to people who monologue…
Let’s let the rest of the folks catch up…
A.L.
Cool.
However one may judge the moral responsibility of the media, unfortunately, at the end of the day, it is still about profit. Financial profit. Whatever your job, the guidelines most employees follow who wish to advance in their industry are set by the executives in charge, whose first responsibility is to the shareholder. If you can sell more papers by calling America the bad guy, since the attention generated includes outrage along with agreement, then you call America the bad guy, or make the criminal despot a romantic or tragic figure, ala Jesse James. Whatever works. Just sell. Garner public attention through outrage or compassion, but do that which sells the most, gains the largest share or gets reprinted or restated with the most frequency. It is our nature to wish to see something deeper in the actions of journalists, politicians and the like, when, really, but for a few passionate souls, their drive is to follow the profitable trend and shape the debate to extend the trend as long as possible. They are there to make a living, above any personal drive to make a difference. That is why I am so grateful for the blogosphere and people like Michael Totten, whose essays on current events in the Middle East seem to make a genuine attempt at fair reporting, even though he, too, is trying to make a living. I appreciate his imagery and clear portrayal of those he meets from the perspective of an educated American, trying to operate without bias.
Well said TK, so do I. But if the rest of us are going to live up to the exammple Michael has set don’t we have to be willing to look at the media’s role in these previous atrocties, and in the rise of figures such as Mao, and Arafat. A lot of people are willing to look at America’s role in these things (media people especially) even embellish that role rather dramatically. The media’s role draws nothing but silence.