[BretLudwig]

The Yellow Press

by William S. Lind

"A person my age has watched many things decline in America, and few get
better. As one of my neighbors says, everything good is gone or going. In
that category we must now include good reporting. When I started work in
Washington in 1973, it was axiomatic that a newspaper reporter talked to
many sources for any story. The story, in turn, reflected a number of
viewpoints and perspectives. No reporter worth his bourbon would have
dreamed of just printing some press release put out by the government.

But that is now what they all seem to do, especially in covering the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Forgetting that the phrase "to lie like a
bulletin" is military in origin €“ the reference is to bulletins issued
by Napoleon's grande armeé €“ they print verbatim the happy talk the
U.S. military is obliged by the Bush administration to spew. To the degree
the war in Iraq is still covered, the American public is assured over and
over that "violence is down." For the moment, that is true, but the
implication that we are on a roll is not true. Fourth Generation wars do
not move in linear fashion. Violence is down because the constantly
shifting network of deals and alliances among Iraq's warlords has created
a stable interlude. Those alliances will continue to shift, and as they do
so violence will rise again. How many reporters are asking the talking-dog
majors who brief the press the central strategic question, namely whether
there is any evidence a state is reemerging in Iraq? As best I can tell,
none. The same number appears to be trying to answer that question from
other, more reliable sources.

The reporting on Afghanistan is if anything worse. On Sunday, June 22, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, a paper I like, printed an AP article under the
headline, "Marines Drive Taliban From Volatile Province," namely Helmand.
The article itself more modestly claims victory in one Helmand town,
Garmser. If the 24th MEU has driven the Taliban out of Helmand province,
I'll eat my yurt. One town, maybe, but what does taking a town mean in a
guerilla war? When the Marines leave, which they will, the Taliban will
return.

The fact of the matter is, the whole NATO/American effort in Afghanistan
is circling the drain. The American papers should be full of in-depth,
multi-sourced stories about the war there. A friend just back from Britain
reports that the British press is full of just such stories. In one recent
10-day period, the Brits lost nine soldiers killed, including their first
woman. Was that reported anywhere in the U.S. press?

What lies behind the decline in the quality of American reporting?
Cutbacks in the size of newsrooms are part of the answer. As the
electronic image replaces the printed word, newspapers are dying. To those
who know that perceiving reality requires more than shadows on the cave
wall, that is bad news.

Lazy reporters are another part of the answer. It is easy to print the
bulletins. Reporters have always been lazy, but now their editors let them
get away with it. Not too many decades ago, any reporter who single-sourced
a story would have been sent back on the street to get more sources, with a
richness of invective editors seldom lacked.

But the biggest reason, I suspect, is intellectual cowardice. After the
defeat in Vietnam, many supporters of the war blamed the press for our
failure. By printing the bad news, the press supposedly undermined popular
support for the war and thereby caused our defeat. It's poppycock, of
course. The Vietnam War was lost early in the game when MACV, at the
demand of Gen. William Depuy, ordered an end to efforts to control the
populated coastal lowlands in favor of fighting formal battles against
enemy main force units in the highlands. Those units were sent there as
bait, which MACV took.

But the American press was scarred by the accusations. Now, it is afraid
to be accused of "not supporting the troops" if it does anything but print
the bulletins. So the American public gets the mushroom treatment, and two
failed wars continue ad infinitum. When the roof falls in both in Iraq and
in Afghanistan, the shock will be considerable. America's yellow press will
deserve no small share of the blame."

http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=13048
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5042




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