Sunday, October 3

Our Troops Accuse the Media of Biased Reporting

Visit Marine Corps Moms (http://marinecorpsmoms.com) for a more accurate perception of what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan than you can get from American media. Here's a quote...and there's more on the site. Much more. And they're first hand reports.

"we get what reader Jim League of Smyrna complains about. He cited a picture and story featured at the top of Page 13A in Saturday's Tennessean:

"The perhaps 100 protesters get front-and-center billing, and the impression is that all of Iraq is unhappy. What is missing is perspective. Imagine a foreigner perusing the front page of The Tennessean. He reads about a 15-year-old-boy being chained to his bed for six weeks. Would he be justified in believing that all parents in America constrain their children? If he had no perspective and if his impression was selectively reinforced by subtle media or political pundits, this could be possible."

Exactly. And what we get on TV is also just one side. Consider this story Rose saw reported: "I was going through the battle damage assessment at my desk with NBC's Today on the TV. The attack occurred in the middle of the night. I had the footage of the attack on my computer, and here's Katie Couric (or whoever hosts it) showing the same bomb location.}

"I had pictures of the bombed vehicles, which is how I knew she was talking about the same location. The next shot is kids being carried into a hospital. We had eyes on this for a long time. If there were kids in there, they were toting weapons or the terrorists used them as human shields. …"

"I went to our Combat Operations Center and walked into them watching the same thing. I verified what I thought and spoke with our intelligence guys. They said the whole thing was staged and probably old footage. They track the footage and have seen repeat footage shown in the past. They also said to look at the footage and see if it makes sense. More often than not, it doesn't … pulling a child from rubble with relatively clean clothes. "

Is NBC wrong and the Marines right? Americans deserve both sides to make up their minds."

This is what I have heard from my son-in-law, a retired Army Colonel who recently went to Iraq to help with training. When he returned he was furious with journalists and spent hours describing what was REALLY happening in Iraq. What he described was what he had seen first hand.

When was it decided that the American people didn't deserve to know the truth? Who has so little faith in the American people that they can't give us balanced news? Isn't it time we took matters into our own hands and did something about it?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It's more than sad, Kiki. It's dangerous. And it's the more dangerous because, with few exceptions, there's no such thing as presenting two sides of a question. That's what a responsible media would do -- but those guys don't even try.

The one ray of hope is Fox news, and they do seem to be making an impression.