For warbloggers, "The Media Are the Enemy"
Responding to the two columns I recently wrote about the fight they've picked with the Associated Press over the simmering Jamil Hussein controversy and the Burned Alive saga, warbloggers claim I miss the larger point of their crusade.
Trust me, I'm not missing the point. I get it. I just don't buy it.
I don't believe that the same partisan bloggers who habitually peddle anti-Democratic and anti-media conspiracy theories (Terri Schiavo talking points memo, anyone?) have an overriding concern for the quality of reporting taking place in Iraq and are willing to spend untold hours dissecting and obsessing over a single AP report out of their sheer contempt for sloppy journalism. I do believe, however, that warbloggers, desperate for an Iraq scapegoat, are willing to invest whatever amount of time and energy it takes to advance their phony notion that the press is to blame for the Iraq fiasco.
Look, the prominent warblog Little Green Footballs spells it out best with the recurring headline it often uses for the constant flow of items that disparage the press: "The Media Are the Enemy." That may as well be the warbloggers' motto. And that's fine. If they want to spend their waking hours attacking war reporters, calling them cowardly and unethical, and trying to intimidate the press, so be it. Warbloggers have become an integral part of the right-wing noise machine. But when they get called on it, warbloggers shouldn't demand apologies, insisting they're merely obsessive fact-checkers doing democracy a favor.
There's nothing wrong with asking reporters to back up their work and demanding accountability. As I wrote in my first Jamil Hussein column, there should be hell to pay if it turns out that the AP passed along phony news. But where warbloggers jumped the tracks was when they accused the global wire service of being in bed with insurgents and "spreading terrorist propaganda," where they mocked journalists for not venturing into deadly areas of Baghdad to document the carnage first-hand, and where they claimed questions raised about Jamil Hussein somehow negate the mainstream media's war reporting.
Bottom line: I don't believe warbloggers and they don't believe me. So be it. And frankly, arguing the details of the Jamil Hussein case seems to be a wasted effort, since warbloggers apparently have copyrighted the facts of the case, and nothing I write is going to penetrate their preferred version.
For instance, in my last column, I noted the Burned Alive incident as reported by the AP was "no more than a few sentences" within a much larger dispatch from Baghdad that day. Prominent warblogger and AP foe Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse announced that my description was "absurd on its face and bespeaks" an "extraordinary ignorance of the facts." Hmm, here's a copy of the original, November 24 AP dispatch. Feel free to count the number of sentences in the 1,000-plus word article taken up by the Burned Alive angle...That's right, the answer is two. But, according to Moran, it's "absurd" to suggest that the Burned Alive story took up no more than a few sentences of a larger AP story.
Whatever.
Warbloggers also make a big deal that I didn't mention that the AP has used Jamil Hussein as a source for approximately 60 articles, which proves they're not obsessed over a single story, but think it represents a wider, systemic problem. But warbloggers have had a month to dissect those 60 articles that quote Hussein and, as far as I can tell, they haven't found a mountain of factual errors in any of them. The only error they claim to have uncovered is in the Burned Alive story. So my point still stands; they're questioning a few sentences from a single AP report -- one article out of literally thousands that the agency has filed from Baghdad since 2003 -- to suggest that the AP's reporting is not trustworthy.
What's really interesting, though, is that warbloggers, as we speak, are being pushed even further to the margins within the conservative media sphere, as traditional, war-supporting pundits like The New York Times' David Brooks and the National Review's Rich Lowry dismiss the notion that the mainstream media is ignoring all the "good news" out of Iraq or that the press manufactured Iraq's "civil war." As Lowry wrote this week, "Many conservatives lost touch with reality on Iraq."
Hey warbloggers, he's looking at you.
A final note: I did make a factual error in my last column. It came when I recounted the warbloggers' muted reaction this month to the news that a cameraman in Iraq working for the AP -- the same AP that supposedly cozies up to terrorists -- was murdered by insurgents in Mosul. I noted the "odd silence that emanated from the warblogs" at the time, which was accurate. I also wrote that warbloggers "uniformly ignored" the news. That was not accurate.
Warblogger SeeDubya at The Junkyard Blog did write about the cameraman's death and offered his condolences. I'm guessing that's the only instance I missed since warbloggers have combed over my column and nobody else has stepped forward with examples. That means dozens of warbloggers in the past month have breathlessly hyped the AP saga, devoting tens of thousands of word to the controversy and often suggested that reporters are doing the insurgents' bidding. Then when news came that an AP cameraman was killed by insurgents, one warblogger wrote about it sympathetically, devoting approximately 50 words to the murder. I think that gives readers all the perspective they need.
Meanwhile, I did quote SeeDubya in my column this way:
"The Western press is negligently or carelessly (I'm not ready to believe knowingly) passing along terrorist propaganda disguised as news."
SeeDubya excitedly claims that was unfair because I neglected to quote the entire sentence:
In both stories, the worst scenario is that the Western press is negligently or carelessly (I'm not ready to believe knowingly) passing along terrorist propaganda disguised as news.
I should have included the whole sentence. But I'll leave it to readers to determine whether I drastically altered the fundamental point he was making.
The "controversy" over the two topics verges on the insane. The true believers in the cause of war at all times to be supported by other people and their children cannot afford to look at themselves in the mirror of reality because the pain would be too much. These will look to any thin reed to support their untenable arguments. Blowing up one small thing to obscure the much larger, uglier picture is all that they can do to hide their problems. Years from now they will still be screaming that the press, and you in particular, will actually be to blame for our "loss of Iraq." It seems like we are to replay Viet Nam for at least another century. After all, the US South is still fighting in many ways.
The furor you stir cannot drive them crazy, simply because, as you amply demonstrate, they already are. And, I appreciate this follow-up, for, although I "felt" much of what you say here, I was unable adequately to articulate what I "felt", and more importantly, unable to speak for you on their blogs.
I do believe, however, that warbloggers, desperate for an Iraq scapegoat, are willing to invest whatever amount of time and energy it takes to advance their phony notion that the press is to blame for the Iraq fiasco. ----------- You're so right, and it's not just the warbloggers but also the warmongers such as Sean Hannity, Oliver North, et al.
These guys cry "liberal media traitors" yet don't question why FOX News sent Oliver North to Iraq for a week and only had him report on happenings in Ramadi and Anbar (and even then he never mentioned that his escort was killed shortly after escorting him).
If things are so distorted by the MSM, wouldn't "fair and balanced" FOX be all over the "true" story in Iraq instead of largely ignoring it? I seem to remember a preponderence of purple fingers in the days when the news looked better for the Bush administration.
Meanwhile, these same critics of the "liberal media" don't seem to have a complaint about Judith Miller's and others' flawed reporting in the gin-up to the war.
Boehlert already forced warbloggers to say that they know the war is going badly. It's like when Bush said he knows Saddam didn't attack us in the debate with Kerry.
Right wingers will admit obvious facts now and again, but they'll still continue to advance theories at odds with those obvious facts.
Have been blaming the meida for failures in Iraq since invasion day back in March of 2003. Nothing is going to stop that, but history itself will prove that the media has been right, most of the time, and that the bloggers, sitting in their parent's basements, were very very wrong about this war (for full disclosure, I am sitting in my parent's spare room, home for the holidays and all, but I never have been pro war in my life).
by those pictures day after day of people weeping over the coffin of a loved one killed in a car bombing.....think, oh i don't know, that new school that opened last week.
...is very interesting. There is no explanantion of why it was retracted other than "My source just informed me that he had incorrect information. I'm removing the post. I'll update as soon as I know more." I'm not a journalist, but isn't there usually an explanation of what that the original mistake was, and then the explanation for the retraction? Malkin has completely deleted the incorrect post altogether. Oh wait, I've not included the enitre post: A few minutes ago, I posted an update to the Jamil Hussein story. My source just informed me that he had incorrect information. I'm removing the post. I'll update as soon as I know more.
There. I didn't want to be accused of altering the autrhor's meaning.
Mr Boehlert throws around the word "partisan" as a supposedly negative term towards the rightwing blogs, when in fact this site is as partisan-left as they are partisan-right. If it is Mr. Boehlerts true belief that being "partisan" is a bad thing, then perhaps Media Matters should cease and desist with their own brand of it.
Also, branding these right-wing bloggers as "warbloggers" is the sort of namecalling I thought was only reserved for the intellectual giants such as O-Reilly et akl.
Also, deciding now that arguing the details of Jamil Hussein is a wasted effort is convenient logic now that it appears that the facts do not support your initial premise. The media in this country is not to be trusted, they are a shill for the Republican party, they are an embarrassment and an abomination. But put this same media overseas covering a war you don't agree with, and suddenly this same group is trustworthy and reliable when their reporting supports your conclusions. Whatever you say.
it's not a matter of the media being trustworthy. it's a matter of reporting things that are truly happening. many on the right want to blame the press and claim that it is the media that is presenting a false image of violence in iraq. well, those things are happening. car bombs kill dozens and dozens more show up dead in the streets of baghdad every morning. but many on the right claim that because one or two stories can't be authenticated to everyone's satisfaction, then all the other stories are made up. and the indisputable fact is that the press has done more than it's fair share of shilling for bush. they buried all the contrary evidence about wmd in the run up to the war, and all but ignored the downing street memo which said of the case for going to war "the facts were being fixed aroung the policy".
We need the truth. I read the right wing blogs fairly regularly, not every day, and I've never read where they don't want the truth. I've also seen where they have exposed photography that looks authentic but when investigated was clearly staged. Why use staged photography when the real pictures of war are readily available? That type of propaganda needs to be exposed for the fantasy that it is. The situation is bad enough that it should stand on its own, the faked images shouldn't be necessary. No reason to be against exposing it or investigating any story that doesn't add up.
they want the truth, i'm not sure i can agree with that. the right wing spends a lot of it's time on stories that are plainly and simply false. all the swift boat nonsense about kerry, for instance. there was the instance of that photographer who was fired by reuters, and deservedly so. my point remains, and so does the point of this article. the point being that the media is not making up the violence in iraq. if anything, they underplayed for a long time.