Recommended reading: The war over the war, separating the facts from the spin
Like so many other Americans, I have found myself glued to the TV and the Web in the past week, anxiously channel surfing for salient tidbits of news about the conflict in Iraq. Last night, while watching Aaron Brown on CNN, it hit me: we are being bombarded increasingly by noise, not news, and even worse, noise posing as news with an agenda. That is why I recommend an excellent article by Michael Moran, War over the war, on msnbc.com.
The noise, spin and negative innuendo I saw last night on CNN is poisonous at best. What many of us hoped would be a quick and decisive conflict is showing signs of a much longer and more painful war than breathlessly optimistic blathering from the major news outlets would have had us believe but a few days ago. Much worse, I am now seeing the pundits kick in, elbowing their way in for face time on the tube to tell their side of the story. I would not be surprised if many of these so-called "experts" have never had a day of military experience. Or, many are a bunch of retired or turned-out full-bird colonels or generals with an axe to grind.
The facts are getting lost amid noise and spin. As they say, truth is the first casualty in a war, and even with 24/7, instant access to the battlefield and even the streets of Baghdad, the facts are getting fogged behind opinions and slanted views packaged as expert analysis. In a battle of information, soundbites and scoops, news is losing the battle to noise.
No more depressing an example could be seen than an interview between Aaron Brown and a New York Times reporter, (David?) Broder last night on CNN. The entire dialogue was a downward spiral on what the US military leadership had done wrong, why it could not work, and why it was doomed to fail. By the end of the conversation, my blood boiled and my heart pounded. I turned off the TV simply because I could not take it any more. I could barely sleep last night just thinking about it. What I saw contained no facts, only assertions and assumptions, mixed with the venomous and insidious death-by-a-thousand-paper cuts undermining of why we are in Iraq in the first place. I have no sons or daughters in Iraq, but I could only assume how any young soldier's parent must have felt.
This is not to say that I want to see all media presentations be like that of the Iraqi military and leadership. I am more than a little patriotic and despite deep misgivings about war of any kind, am sadly convinced that war was the only option left to resolve this terrible conflict, given the lack of progress of diplomacy over the past 12 years (and that includes the failure of the UN to do anything constructive about this). I do want to know what is going on, even if the news is bad. I have worried from the start about the strategic assumptions of the US offensive. I worry that the 4th Infantry Division should have been in Kuwait prior to the start of hostilities, and that we may have outrun our ability to supply our front line troops. I want to know that things aren't going swimmingly, and why. But what I don't want is to have someone opposed to the Bush administration to begin with, or with the war in Iraq to use their power and influence on-camera to undermine the credibility and morale of the young men and women tasked with resolving what diplomacy failed to do, not to mention their families and the spirit of America.
Like it or not, we are in a war. There is no turning back. Anyone, including the media, pundits and purported "experts" alike who think that war can be antiseptic either has failed to read a single page of history or has watched too many Roadrunner cartoons. War is real. War is ugly. War is slow, unfair, painful and horrible. War is imperfect, and no amount of high tech weaponry will allow it to be otherwise. It was not that long ago that terms such as "rules of engagement" were unknown. Instead of worrying about collateral damage and loss of innocent lives, belligerents would simply lay waste to cities, firebomb them and all inhabitants rather than bother with messy house-to-house battles. That is not to say that I nostalgically hark for "the good old days" when it was okay to commit any atrocity in the name of your side. Quite the opposite.
I would only hope that the reporters sitting in air conditioned studios thousands of miles away from the battles (as contrasted to the embedded journalists, who are a badly needed dose of reality, as they are suffering alongside the soldiers), many of whom never served in the military, would get a clue. I hold equal contempt for the pundits and self-proclaimed experts with an agenda. Please, in the rush to get a scoop or sell more beer commercials, think twice. This isn't the Nielsen sweeps. There are human lives at stake. Cut the crap. Squelch the noise. Please give us facts and real news.
It's ironic that in the age of 24 hour cable news channels with live reporting, that it seems that the reporting of today is of a much lower quality than the masterful work of an Edward R. Murrow. We could take a lesson from the past. And it is for this reason that I am critical of CNN’s portrayal of the war, and in this particular example, Aaron Brown’s subtle innuendos and direction of a very negative viewpoint of the conflict and its progress. And CNN is but one example. Please, less noise. More news. Less analysis, opinion, spin and assertion. Let the truth be told. And worry less about filling every available second with noise for the sake of filling time. The American public and the young men and women on the battlefields of Iraq deserve no less.
Like so many other Americans, I have found myself glued to the TV and the Web in the past week, anxiously channel surfing for salient tidbits of news about the conflict in Iraq. Last night, while watching Aaron Brown on CNN, it hit me: we are being bombarded increasingly by noise, not news, and even worse, noise posing as news with an agenda. That is why I recommend an excellent article by Michael Moran, War over the war, on msnbc.com.
The noise, spin and negative innuendo I saw last night on CNN is poisonous at best. What many of us hoped would be a quick and decisive conflict is showing signs of a much longer and more painful war than breathlessly optimistic blathering from the major news outlets would have had us believe but a few days ago. Much worse, I am now seeing the pundits kick in, elbowing their way in for face time on the tube to tell their side of the story. I would not be surprised if many of these so-called "experts" have never had a day of military experience. Or, many are a bunch of retired or turned-out full-bird colonels or generals with an axe to grind.
The facts are getting lost amid noise and spin. As they say, truth is the first casualty in a war, and even with 24/7, instant access to the battlefield and even the streets of Baghdad, the facts are getting fogged behind opinions and slanted views packaged as expert analysis. In a battle of information, soundbites and scoops, news is losing the battle to noise.
No more depressing an example could be seen than an interview between Aaron Brown and a New York Times reporter, (David?) Broder last night on CNN. The entire dialogue was a downward spiral on what the US military leadership had done wrong, why it could not work, and why it was doomed to fail. By the end of the conversation, my blood boiled and my heart pounded. I turned off the TV simply because I could not take it any more. I could barely sleep last night just thinking about it. What I saw contained no facts, only assertions and assumptions, mixed with the venomous and insidious death-by-a-thousand-paper cuts undermining of why we are in Iraq in the first place. I have no sons or daughters in Iraq, but I could only assume how any young soldier's parent must have felt.
This is not to say that I want to see all media presentations be like that of the Iraqi military and leadership. I am more than a little patriotic and despite deep misgivings about war of any kind, am sadly convinced that war was the only option left to resolve this terrible conflict, given the lack of progress of diplomacy over the past 12 years (and that includes the failure of the UN to do anything constructive about this). I do want to know what is going on, even if the news is bad. I have worried from the start about the strategic assumptions of the US offensive. I worry that the 4th Infantry Division should have been in Kuwait prior to the start of hostilities, and that we may have outrun our ability to supply our front line troops. I want to know that things aren't going swimmingly, and why. But what I don't want is to have someone opposed to the Bush administration to begin with, or with the war in Iraq to use their power and influence on-camera to undermine the credibility and morale of the young men and women tasked with resolving what diplomacy failed to do, not to mention their families and the spirit of America.
Like it or not, we are in a war. There is no turning back. Anyone, including the media, pundits and purported "experts" alike who think that war can be antiseptic either has failed to read a single page of history or has watched too many Roadrunner cartoons. War is real. War is ugly. War is slow, unfair, painful and horrible. War is imperfect, and no amount of high tech weaponry will allow it to be otherwise. It was not that long ago that terms such as "rules of engagement" were unknown. Instead of worrying about collateral damage and loss of innocent lives, belligerents would simply lay waste to cities, firebomb them and all inhabitants rather than bother with messy house-to-house battles. That is not to say that I nostalgically hark for "the good old days" when it was okay to commit any atrocity in the name of your side. Quite the opposite.
I would only hope that the reporters sitting in air conditioned studios thousands of miles away from the battles (as contrasted to the embedded journalists, who are a badly needed dose of reality, as they are suffering alongside the soldiers), many of whom never served in the military, would get a clue. I hold equal contempt for the pundits and self-proclaimed experts with an agenda. Please, in the rush to get a scoop or sell more beer commercials, think twice. This isn't the Nielsen sweeps. There are human lives at stake. Cut the crap. Squelch the noise. Please give us facts and real news.
It's ironic that in the age of 24 hour cable news channels with live reporting, that it seems that the reporting of today is of a much lower quality than the masterful work of an Edward R. Murrow. We could take a lesson from the past. And it is for this reason that I am critical of CNN’s portrayal of the war, and in this particular example, Aaron Brown’s subtle innuendos and direction of a very negative viewpoint of the conflict and its progress. And CNN is but one example. Please, less noise. More news. Less analysis, opinion, spin and assertion. Let the truth be told. And worry less about filling every available second with noise for the sake of filling time. The American public and the young men and women on the battlefields of Iraq deserve no less.
posted by Brian at
7:40 PM
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