The Mainstream Media Fails Our Heroes
Consider this an exclamation point as to why we need more sites like this one, and more guys like Pat, Michael Yon, Bill Roggio et al…
~Bashman
Modern Heroes
BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN (WSJ)
Thursday, October 4, 2007
I’m weary of seeing news stories about wounded soldiers and assertions of “support” for the troops mixed with suggestions of the futility of our military efforts in Iraq. Why aren’t there more accounts of what the troops actually do? How about narrations of individual battles and skirmishes, of their ever-evolving interactions with Iraqi troops and locals in Baghdad and Anbar province, and of increasingly resourceful “patterning” of terrorist networks that goes on daily in tactical operations centers?
The sad and often unspoken truth of the matter is this: Americans have been conditioned less to understand Iraq’s complex military reality than to feel sorry for those who are part of it.
The media struggles in good faith to respect our troops, but too often it merely pities them. I am generalizing, of course. Indeed, there are regular, stellar exceptions, quite often in the most prominent liberal publications, from our best military correspondents. But exceptions don’t quite cut it amidst the barrage of “news,” which too often descends into therapy for those who are not fighting, rather than matter-of-fact stories related by those who are.
As one battalion commander complained to me, in words repeated by other soldiers and marines: “Has anyone noticed that we now have a volunteer Army? I’m a warrior. It’s my job to fight.” Every journalist has a different network of military contacts. Mine come at me with the following theme: We want to be admired for our technical proficiency–for what we do, not for what we suffer. We are not victims. We are privileged.
The cult of victimhood in American history first flourished in the aftermath of the 1960s youth rebellion, in which, as University of Chicago Prof. Peter Novick writes, women, blacks, Jews, Native Americans and others fortified their identities with public references to past oppressions. The process was tied to Vietnam, a war in which the photographs of civilian victims “displaced traditional images of heroism.” It appears that our troops have been made into the latest victims.
Heroes, according to the ancients, are those who do great deeds that have a lasting claim to our respect. To suffer is not necessarily to be heroic. Obviously, we have such heroes, who are too often ignored. Witness the low-key coverage accorded to winners of the Medal of Honor and of lesser decorations.
The first Medal of Honor in the global war on terror was awarded posthumously to Army Sgt. First Class Paul Ray Smith of Tampa, Fla., who was killed under withering gunfire protecting his wounded comrades outside Baghdad airport in April 2003.
According to LexisNexis, by June 2005, two months after his posthumous award, his stirring story had drawn only 90 media mentions, compared with 4,677 for the supposed Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay, and 5,159 for the court-martialed Abu Ghraib guard Lynndie England. While the exposure of wrongdoing by American troops is of the highest importance, it can become a tyranny of its own when taken to an extreme.
Media frenzies are ignited when American troops are either the perpetrators of acts resulting in victimhood, or are victims themselves. Meanwhile, individual soldiers daily performing complicated and heroic deeds barely fit within the strictures of news stories as they are presently defined. This is why the sporadic network and cable news features on heroic soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan comes across as so hokey. After all, the last time such reports were considered “news” was during World War II and the Korean War.
In particular, there is Fox News’s occasional series on war heroes, whose apparent strangeness is a manifestation of the distance the media has traveled away from the nation-state in the intervening decades. Fox’s war coverage is less right-wing than it is simply old-fashioned, antediluvian almost. Fox’s commercial success may be less a factor of its ideological base than of something more primal: a yearning among a large segment of the public for a real national media once again–as opposed to an international one. Nationalism means patriotism, and patriotism requires heroes, not victims.
Full Article WSJ
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“The media struggles in good faith to respect our troops”
NO. It doesn’t.
October 4th, 2007 at 4:38 pmThe LLLMSM doesn’t give a flying fuck about our troops. That’s why we need sites like this, hot air, and Sanchez, Yon, Reggio, North, to get the real story of our heroes out to the world. And despite the lying ass media outlets and their daily drivel, it is working. I’ve gotten several folks to stop by here who have come to the same conclusion as I have…and not all of them are conservatives.
The lefists Soros dick-suckers are in deep kimpshee when even Dhimis start figuring out on their own, that the LLLMSM is full of shit.
It’s happening people. Get used to it. The media must think everyone in America is as fucked up (or high) as they are. But they’re wrong. The American consumers of the media are alot smarter than the media thinks. And even a Dhimi can smell a ratfink. Well, at least some can.
I’m seeing more and more Dhimis come to their senses. I didn’t see that in 2000 and 2004. But the Hildabeast is scaring away a whole helluva lot of Dhimis.
Oh plaese nominate her in 2008 Dummycrats. She’ll be the next George McGovern…..a complete loser…
October 4th, 2007 at 5:03 pmYeah, fuckin’ right. They struggle to try to find ways to smear the troops without actually appearing to smear the troops.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:08 pmI agree to some extent. I LOVE seeing stories of heroes
-I think a news series on them would do quite well, and should be tried. I know that there are occasional pieces, but I think more like them would do well.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:32 pmI so wish they’d treat our heroes with more respect!
October 4th, 2007 at 5:55 pmI have been watching the PBS Ken Burns produced series “The War” and have heard War Vets say at least 2 times that their units took no prisoners after witnessing atrocities committed by the japs or germs. If todays main stream media was reporting during WWII similar to reporting in Iraq And Afghanistan they would be jailed for TREASON and we would be speaking german! The MSM & democrats today sound more like tokyo rose(nancy pelosi) and joseph georbels(harry reid) pushing their self serving propaganda!
October 4th, 2007 at 7:26 pm