The Endangered Questioning Journalist
My appetite for television news, never high, has been staying away in droves for a good long time now. As a result, while I could pick Peter J out of a lineup, he is no more of a cultural icon to me than those other heads out there.
However, passages like his, sad as they are, sometimes have beneficial side-effects that may partly offset the mourning. This article suggests that Mr. Jennings may have been responsible for providing some nutritious bits among the swill that seems the most common constituent of most news broadcasts these days. And the caution that we not be too taken in by sudden spasms of self-righteousness among liberal journalists seems very timely.
Peter Jennings on the Iraq War by Lila Rajiva
Media Research Center - "the largest media watch-dog organization in America," it touts itself - is a non-profit conservative outfit founded and run by L. Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative activist. Its website compiles lists of what it considers liberal bias in the media, among which it places Peter Jennings' allegedly anti-American commentary on the Iraq War. Two years after the War, though, that commentary looks more and more like accurate, responsible, and at times prescient reporting. It also undermines the self-exculpatory liberal consensus that Bush "lied us into war" by showing us just how much even broadcast journalists subject to all the particular commercial and government pressures of TV can manage to put on the air if they make the effort.
Obviously Bush did lie, but just as obviously a number of journalists who now affect misused innocence not only did not question those lies but avidly went along with them. More than government propaganda, media self-censorship and opportunism has to be to blamed for the dismal non-coverage of the Iraq War in America. Jennings consistently put the focus where it should have been and not on sideshows served up for public distraction, to the everlasting shame of several leading print outlets, not to mention a tidy number of academic and government experts.
Not bad for a high school drop out.
[clip]
However, passages like his, sad as they are, sometimes have beneficial side-effects that may partly offset the mourning. This article suggests that Mr. Jennings may have been responsible for providing some nutritious bits among the swill that seems the most common constituent of most news broadcasts these days. And the caution that we not be too taken in by sudden spasms of self-righteousness among liberal journalists seems very timely.
Peter Jennings on the Iraq War by Lila Rajiva
Media Research Center - "the largest media watch-dog organization in America," it touts itself - is a non-profit conservative outfit founded and run by L. Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative activist. Its website compiles lists of what it considers liberal bias in the media, among which it places Peter Jennings' allegedly anti-American commentary on the Iraq War. Two years after the War, though, that commentary looks more and more like accurate, responsible, and at times prescient reporting. It also undermines the self-exculpatory liberal consensus that Bush "lied us into war" by showing us just how much even broadcast journalists subject to all the particular commercial and government pressures of TV can manage to put on the air if they make the effort.
Obviously Bush did lie, but just as obviously a number of journalists who now affect misused innocence not only did not question those lies but avidly went along with them. More than government propaganda, media self-censorship and opportunism has to be to blamed for the dismal non-coverage of the Iraq War in America. Jennings consistently put the focus where it should have been and not on sideshows served up for public distraction, to the everlasting shame of several leading print outlets, not to mention a tidy number of academic and government experts.
Not bad for a high school drop out.
[clip]
posted by Sir Gumbo at 12:34 PM
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