What should the U.S.’s role be?

[NinaBrooke]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

Of course, we all know the history of the First Gulf War. The military, acting on the lessons it learned in Vietnam, did not cooperate with reporters. The military eased off excluding reporters for the Second Gulf War, but it controlled access and censored the reporting (ask Geraldo Rivera) much like it did during WWII. It seems that journalists covering the peacekeeping operations in Iraq are happy to stay embedded, especially in the wake of the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Most of today’s war correspondents do not venture anywhere without a U.S. military presence nearby.

.

thanks for your posts and insights on that matter.

[Rudyard K]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

OK. **Throwing the gauntlet down** Justify your position. [Oh, with something other than "debunking the liberal media-type publications.]

Geez, what a joke. Justify Yours CT.

Peej, I know we have the "yapping dog" as the moniker for one of our members...

I'm thinking this one would be appropriate for CT...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG75FJkjr8

[NinaBrooke]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

On top of which, the media allowed its neutrality in reporting to be compromised. When they allowed reporters to be "embedded" with troops, the reporters lost all objective reporting ability. Suddenly, they were "one" with the troops. Objective reporting stopped. They had been compromised. And they became the voice of the administration/military.

The question is also how objective news about wars ever can be. Because some information is simply classified. Plus, if you enter a materia (even as a researcher) you get part of the process. Psychologically speaking that is. If you are with US troops you necessarily report from their ways of thinking. Or lets put it more correct or less blunt, you are biased towards their favour. I think independent war journalism is tough. I am not sure it happens in Europe either. We had some pretty good journalism on the war but i have to admit i always preferred to watch US-medias on the war. They seem to be more intellectual. It comes with the territory of how someone becomes a journalist. In Austria all you need to do is "not" finish university and use big words and apply at a newspaper.
In the USA its a highly qualified job.
Germany as well. I think it depends on many things on how journalism gets reported. Europe seems to be sometimes too stereotypically anti-american that it bores me to hell already. So i prefer to read american newspapers or CNN.

ps: bad tongues say that the news reportage about eastern europe fueled the trigger to the first worldwar. BEcause they made so much propaganda and whatnot. So - objective and news , i am not sure.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by Rudyard K

Geez, what a joke. Justify Yours CT.

Peej, I know we have the "yapping dog" as the moniker for one of our members...

I'm thinking this one would be appropriate for CT...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG75FJkjr8

I'm thinking you discount your yappy pack dog statues.

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

You're kidding right?

Try this for starters: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1971

So, you only went back 6 1/2 years to find support for your position. There was no statement that Moyers/PBS was "liberal." The statement from the article is:

According to reports in the public broadcasting newspaper Current (1/19/04, 6/7/04) and in the New Yorker (6/7/04), conservative complaints about the alleged liberal bias of the program Now With Bill Moyers contributed to the momentum to "balance" the PBS lineup.

Notice those were "conservative complaints." Not the opinion of the publication you cited.

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

@ CT
About two years ago, I watched this episode of Bill Moyers’ The Journal: Is Conservatism Dead? featuring Sam Tanenhaus, the author of The Death Of Conservatism (http://video.pbs.org/video/1266848366). I didn’t find it “neutral” or “unbiased.” At no point does Moyer challenge Tanenhaus’s assumptions, but rather seems to, IMO, enjoy what Tanenhaus is saying. Moyer refers to Fox News as a “propaganda network” (as I’d seen him do on other occasions: attacking a rival network is not journalism; again, IMO) and labels Rush Limbaugh a “noise maker” and the leader of the conservative movement. I personally do not listen to Limbaugh, and I certainly do not consider him a leader of anything. He is part of the “chattering class.” In light of the last national election, I wonder how pundits such as Tanenhaus dare to show their face.

And you only went back 2 years. Neither of this reflects the current PBS. This article, I think, is a more accurate recitation of the current state of affairs:

Is PBS Too Conservative?

By Michael Getler

February 25, 2011

OK. You don’t have to write to me about the headline. I can imagine all the e-mails already that will ask, ‘Are you kidding?’ Well, actually, I am kidding but not as much as you might think.
I don’t like labels — left-right, liberal-conservative. Sometimes they are necessary and useful when circumstances demand and they are needed to understand a point or issue. But generally, I try to stay away from them, especially when it comes to journalism.
I have been a journalist — reporter, editor and most recently ombudsman — for more than 50 years. During that time I have met thousands of journalists, worked with and gotten to know hundreds of them. I’m talking here about what one would describe these days as “mainstream” journalists — reporters and editors who work for newspapers, wire services, some news magazines, the major broadcast TV networks, including PBS, and the web versions of those organizations.
How About Those ‘Centrists’

I can’t say that I know, for sure, the electoral politics of any of them. But if I had to pin a label on the vast majority of them, it would be “centrist,” people who are drawn to news and reporting, who have wanted to do nothing else since they were young, who want to uncover wrong-doing or right-doing, who believe in the importance of informing people, of getting to the bottom of things, of finding out what is really going on and will pursue a story wherever it leads. They see, and even like, complexity, and understand that there are multiple sides to stories.
They are not, in my experience, ideologues who are driven to pursue a political agenda or point of view. Many probably are privately “liberal,” which is a good word, not a bad one, when it comes to civil rights and human rights. Many of that same cohort may, personally, hold more conservative — also not a bad word — views when it comes to finance or economics or foreign policy.
They put their name on their work so they don’t like to make mistakes. They are drawn to news organizations that have a clear firewall between the news sections and the editorial page, and to news staffs that were just as tough on Bill Clinton as they were on George W. Bush, just as tough on Ronald Reagan as they were on Jimmy Carter.
In today’s over-heated and polarized political environment, and in the lightning-fast change of information technology that engulfs us, press distinctions also get blurred. Journalists are reporters, the ones who go out and dig up the stories and material that still forms the basis for the overwhelming amount of news that we know about.
But our world today is filled with ever more commentators, columnists, bloggers, talking heads, political strategists and activists. They cost less to fill air time than do staff news reporters. Much of what they say can be interesting and provocative — or wrong. Some of it can be based on their own reporting. But this is not journalism done by reporters for major news institutions, or for the new news outlets that adhere to tested journalistic standards of accountability and verification.
Where’s PBS?

So where does PBS fit into this? The ombudsman’s office is, on one hand, a pretty good catbird seat. I get a fair amount of mail from which to judge viewer reaction. On the other hand, as I’ve said many times before, people tend to write to me to complain, so I’m always aware that there may be many people out there who disagree with the complainers. Also, lots of people write to me who like to vent, who have strong ideological or political views and are not apt to be satisfied unless their view is supported, or who will not see any virtue in what I may describe as a “centrist” reporting effort.
The conventional tag that I often see applied to PBS is “liberal.” I get a fair amount of mail from critics who say they are viewers and who say they see public broadcasting that way. But I also get probably an equal amount from viewers, or from people who claim to be viewers, that think PBS has moved to the right, that the service has increasingly sold out to the right-wing and corporate interests. I’m not trying to invoke, here, the idea that when one is criticized by both sides it must mean it is doing something right and in the broader public’s interest.
Rather, it is to say that PBS, from where I sit, is not label-worthy, and there are some odd reasons for that.
For one thing, Bill Moyers, who used to generate a lot of mail with his weekly “Journal,” especially from conservative critics, is gone, as is the weekly current affairs program “NOW on PBS,” which also generated some occasional criticism.
Both programs, I should add, also had very large bands of devoted supporters who appreciated their work. I’m among those who miss those programs as vital contributions to the broader collection of public affairs programming that is available to television viewers across the spectrum. The analysis and editorial segment of Bill Moyers Journal often generated controversy, which is absolutely fair. But, as a viewer, the interview and reporting content of both these programs seemed to me to be solid, valuable, thought-provoking, focused on timely and controversial issues, and easily absorbed by citizens seeking to be broadly informed.
The single new current affairs program that has filled part of the former Moyers-NOW time slot since last May, “Need to Know,” has gotten better in my view, does many worthwhile and important segments, but doesn’t seem to generate much mail either way. The parent organization, WNET.org in New York, has said NTK’s future is uncertain and that no decision has been made yet to renew it.
So PBS actually does not have much of a national public affairs presence that goes beyond the NewsHour, which is the only hour-long news program on broadcast TV five nights a week and is about as straight down-the-middle as you can get, the venerable and also straight-forward “Washington Week” program on Friday nights, and “Frontline,” which is probably the best, most important and most hard-hitting investigative show on television, along with CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Indeed, along with the departure of Moyers and NOW last year went the “Worldfocus” international newscast and, in 2009, the journalistic investigative series “Expose.”
The Outliers

But why I really put that slightly facetious headline on the top of this column is this: With the exception of the NewsHour, the single continuing program that I probably get most mail about, almost all of it from enraged viewers, is “The McLaughlin Group,” a famously raucous, weekly, half-hour talk show free-for-all that has gone on for almost 30 years. Although this program has one or two of what may be described as liberal or centrist panelists, it has an unmistakably conservative tone, dominated by the host and other conservative regulars, which may account for the heavy mail I get.
The point, and irony, here, however, as I have explained in many columns, is that this is NOT a PBS program and that PBS has nothing — or almost nothing — to do with this program. It is produced by Oliver Productions, McLaughlin’s own production company, in a CBS-affiliate in Washington, DC. Some CBS affiliates carry the broadcast.
But it is broadcast by an average, according to the most recent PBS statistics, of 251 out of 350-plus PBS-member stations around the country. Some weeks it is more than 300 PBS-affiliated stations. So it is seen every week by a large number of people on their local PBS station and those people most probably think, and who can blame them, that they are watching a PBS program. The reason PBS has at least something to do with this is because of a long-standing agreement between McLaughlin and the PBS-member station in Chicago, WTTW, to put the program on the public television interconnection system satellite for distribution, which is all on the up-and-up, so to say.
All of these member stations are independent and can show whatever they please. A similar, but not quite as widespread, situation exists with another popular weekly public affairs commentary program, “Inside Washington,” which is produced by an ABC affiliate in Washington. PBS also has nothing to do with the production and content of this show but it is distributed to public broadcasting stations nationwide by American Public Television and, by most recent count, about 100 PBS-member stations carry it.
“Inside Washington” is hosted by veteran TV newsman Gordon Peterson. It has a calmer tone and more politically-balanced collection of panelists than does McLaughlin’s Group. But I mention it because syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer is one of the “Inside Washington” panelists and, to me, he seems by far the most dominant; a smart, conservative analyst and commentator who speaks in logical paragraphs to make his points and finds a way, often led by Peterson’s questions, to articulate the most important conservative analysis of news events found on mainstream television outside of Fox.
So, is PBS too conservative? No. But all things considered, as they might say on NPR, it is not an easy place to characterize broadly or pin a label on.

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by ninasastri

The question is also how objective news about wars ever can be. Because some information is simply classified. Plus, if you enter a materia (even as a researcher) you get part of the process. Psychologically speaking that is. If you are with US troops you necessarily report from their ways of thinking. Or lets put it more correct or less blunt, you are biased towards their favour. I think independent war journalism is tough. I am not sure it happens in Europe either. We had some pretty good journalism on the war but i have to admit i always preferred to watch US-medias on the war. They seem to be more intellectual. It comes with the territory of how someone becomes a journalist. In Austria all you need to do is "not" finish university and use big words and apply at a newspaper.
In the USA its a highly qualified job.
Germany as well. I think it depends on many things on how journalism gets reported. Europe seems to be sometimes too stereotypically anti-american that it bores me to hell already. So i prefer to read american newspapers or CNN.

ps: bad tongues say that the news reportage about eastern europe fueled the trigger to the first worldwar. BEcause they made so much propaganda and whatnot. So - objective and news , i am not sure.

I wish I knew that war to which you are referring. During the Vietnam war, the most accurate reporting in the US came from BBC & the Canadian Press. The US press was spoon fed erroneous information by the Administration and DOD.

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

So, you only went back 6 1/2 years to find support for your position. There was no statement that Moyers/PBS was "liberal."

Lets just say I gave your request mare attention than it deserved - a one minute Google.

Your point was absurd on its face. Didn't you follow the whole dust up where they canned Juan Williams (an Obama lapdog) for appearing on Fox.

If it was balanced, the House wouldn't be trying to kill funding for PBS (which btw, it should).

[NinaBrooke]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

I wish I knew that war to which you are referring. During the Vietnam war, the most accurate reporting in the US came from BBC & the Canadian Press. The US press was spoon fed erroneous information by the Administration and DOD.

I am referring to the most recent irak war. which one did you think? and i believe every press is spoon fed from anything. Also european press. and english press especially on irak war. all have agendas they like to portray. Also what gets portrayed in the media is interesting too. I doubt in Japan they have the same opinions on irak war than in USA or europe. I just recently saw a big portrait about 9/11 and how the poor people that have been fallen out of the windows have had to be not portrayed as suicide (jumping out of free will as opposed to falling) due to religious ethics. So press is not unbiased, ever.

That said , i believe that the further away - politically speaking - a journalist lives and the less influence a country that is in war has on the own homecountry where the journalist resides or portrays the events is the one that is the least biased, because they have the least motivation to portray agendas. So, you stating that the english portrayed the vietnam war better than the americans - i mean , yes, go figure.

I don`t say i agree, but i am not a journalist either. They also have to make money somehow. And i believe in USA it is the most diverse criticism too. There are so many countercultures and critical portrays of politics it makes my head swirl.
Who needs newspapers :-)
APA press notices do it for most of the time. Everything else is agendas

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

I wish I knew that war to which you are referring. During the Vietnam war, the most accurate reporting in the US came from BBC & the Canadian Press. The US press was spoon fed erroneous information by the Administration and DOD.

I disagree. I believe war correspondents during the Vietnam War had greater freedom to report than in any war before or since. The only real censorship during that war was that imposed by the NVA and VC; otherwise, journalists went when and where they wanted. Read Herr. ADDENDUM: DOD tried and failed to control the message.

[Rudyard K]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

This article, I think, is a more accurate recitation of the current state of affairs:

So, you post an article of a guy who says they are not "label worthy" becuase the correspondence he recieves (which he admits is probably a liberal leaning viewership) says they are selling out to the right. I could probably go to a John Birch Society meeting and they would call me a wild eyed liberal.

That's your BIG justification? Just becuase "you think" this is more accurate...doesn't make it so. My point CT...is that your request to PJ was a BS request...and if you don't know that then you don't belong in these discussions. I think you do know that, and just chose to ask it anyway...because no one can really answer such a question. Liberal or conservative is an opinion, and is always in the eye of the beholder. That's just sidestepping real underlying issues with some BS argument.

[NinaBrooke]

Originally Posted by Rudyard K

That's your BIG justification? Just becuase "you think" this is more accurate...doesn't make it so. My point CT...is that your request to PJ was a BS request...and if you don't know that then you don't belong in these discussions. I think you do know that, and just chose to ask it anyway...because no one can really answer such a question. Liberal or conservative is an opinion, and is always in the eye of the beholder. That's just sidestepping real underlying issues with some BS argument.

wow, if you guys were that harsh with us women too, i would really support that. Seems amongst guys discussion have to have higher standards while women talking gibberish most of the time and believe they are intellectuals do get away unquestioned ? Not that i am CTs lapdog, but talking who belongs in discussion is not yours to choose. I think CT made a valid point.

[AmericanGeisha]

I think the US needs to mind their own business , Our country is a mess and falling apart and all we do is meddle in other countries business We need to focus on the people here , debts ,healthcare ,Jobs. Our soldiers have risked their lives over + over on 2,3 ,4 tours and come home and can not even get a job and we have lost way too many over the past few years already . We secure oil fields all over the world but it doesn't matter as gas is steady getting to 5$ a gallon if they want US Military these countries should have to pay us if not in $ in oil .The US also needs to stop killing everyone on taxes , legalize prostitution, Marijuana, to get out of the hole they put our country in and ruining lives of peope that are not hurting anyone .

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

I disagree. I believe war correspondents during the Vietnam War had greater freedom to report than in any war before or since. The only real censorship during that war was that imposed by the NVA and VC; otherwise, journalists went when and where they wanted. Read Herr. ADDENDUM: DOD tried and failed to control the message.

I think the following quotation makes my point. The American press agreed to self-imposed restrictions, but the foreign press had no such obligation. Even if the American press felt free to report, some things were off limits. The tension that existed between these self-imposed restrictions and free reporting would necessarily cause some hesitation in full reporting...where the foreign press had none of that. As someone who occasionally listened to the BBC at the time, I can only say that my impression at the time was that their broadcasts were more forthright and accurate than those from American broadcasters.

An Information Conference was held in Honolulu in March 1965 to consider the issue of censorship. The new commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, General William C. Westmoreland, believed that censorship might indeed be the only solution to the problem but that "practical considerations" made it impossible.[37] The media, political, and public uproar that was certain to follow the imposition of such a measure was problematic. Censorship would require the legal underpinnings of a declaration of war as well as an enormous logistical and administrative effort. The censors would need jurisdiction over all communications and transportation facilities connecting South Vietnam with the rest of the world and parallel authority over civilian mail. That would necessitate a large number of multilingual military personnel to do the censoring and expanded, U.S. controlled teletype and radio circuits in South Vietnam to move the censored material...In any case, many of the Saigon correspondents were foreigners beyond the reach of American military regulations and likely to resist any attempt to bring them under control."[38]
The answer seemed to lie in a system of voluntary cooperation between the military and the media. In return for accreditation, military transportation around South Vietnam, and access to briefings and interviews, correspondents would have to abide by certain rules designed to protect military security. MACV and the diplomats believed that they had created a system that was both capable of giving the American people a reasonably accurate accounting of the war without at the same time helping their enemy.[39]
Under the new arrangement, correspondents agreed to withhold certain categories of information from their reports. These included:

never to reveal future plans, operations, or air strikes; information on rules of engagement; or the amounts of ordnance or fuel on hand to support combat units. During an operation, unit designations, troop movements, and tactical deployments were to remain secret. So were the methods, activities, and specific locations of intelligence units; the exact number and type of casualties suffered by friendly forces; the number of sorties and amount of ordnance delivered outside of South Vietnam; and information on aircraft taking off for, en route to, or returning from target areas. The press was also to avoid publishing details on the number of aircraft damaged by enemy antiaircraft defenses; tactical specifics such as altitudes, courses, speeds, or angles of attack; anything that would tend to confirm planned strikes which failed to occur for any reason, including bad weather; the types of enemy weapons that had shot down friendly aircraft; and anything having to do with efforts to find and rescue downed airmen while a search was in progress.[40]

The system seemed to work. Between 1962 and 1968 only three news correspondents were disaccredited for infractions against these guidelines.[41] There was no evidence that the military ever considered the press a source of significant damage to military operations or security. Officials sometimes complained of diplomatic damage done by press coverage, but again there was little evidence that this was extensive. The most significant example was the revelation in the New York Times of Operation Menu, the secret bombing campaign that began in Cambodia in 1969, which caused no political fallout whatsoever until it was confirmed in 1972.[42]
Restrictions also covered still photography and television news coverage. Newsmen were tasked with abiding by a U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) ruling that pictures of recognizable American dead or wounded servicemen would not be released until their next of kin had been notified. Pictures of disfigured wounded, of amputees, or of men in severe shock were also to be withheld unless the permission of the individual had been obtained first.[43] Television coverage of combat was more problematic. Television coverage was shot on motion picture film and, since there were no facilities incountry for developing it, there was no opportunity to review it before it left South Vietnam. This situation, however, was resolved by the complicit cooperation of news editors at the networks (see below). Networks imposed self-censorship regarding footage of American casualties but not for Vietnamese casualties, with war correspondent Neil Davis contending that Americans were denied the right to see the worst aspect of the war.[44]
Correspondents, however, refused to bend as far as South Vietnamese performance was concerned. When Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey addressed a press gathering in Saigon, he informed the group "When you speak to the American people give the benefit of the doubt to our side. I don't think that's asking too much. We're in this together." One newsman present turned to his companion to grumble "Benefit of a doubt? Hell, what do they think we've been doing for the past six years?"[45] This illustrates the tension the media experienced between being seen to be supportive of troops and the normal role of the journalist as a skeptical observer of political policy.[46]

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by ninasastri

Seems amongst guys discussion have to have higher standards while women talking gibberish most of the time and believe they are intellectuals do get away unquestioned ? Not that i am CTs lapdog, but talking who belongs in discussion is not yours to choose. I think CT made a valid point.

Yes dear.

[Guest083011]

No media is unbiased. It is human nature. PJ and CT kiss and make up. The ladies want to see it.