Big Duke Six,
I offer a very different take on the media than from what your tilt towards it seems to be. The Press, “The Fifth Estate”, the “Media”. It is to me probably the most precious of all articles in the Bill of Rights guaranteed in our Constitution. Without it, we would all be totally in the dark about all things. If there were no photos or videos allowed (censorship), and none of us would ever have seen our skyscrapers fall, or the aircraft actually striking them. Photographs generally do not lie. They can be taken out of context, and various people can put “spin” on them, but in the end, they tell the truth. Sometimes the truth is ugly. That’s the way life sometimes is. Sometimes, life can be very good. We all saw the horror of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in photographs. We also saw the compassion of the fire fighter cradling a young girl in his arms who was one of the victims of that horror. Tim McVey, a U.S. soldier, and of Irish heritage American by the sound of his name, was convicted and executed by lethal injection for that horrific act. Yet, no one is on a mission to kill all the Irish over the act of that madman. I see a parallel to the few who cry for the extermination of all Arabs “over there”, as a result of five inhuman criminals who acted with such barbarism in the murder of Mr. Berg.
So often, posters on this board, and others that I come across, attach the label “liberal” in front of the word “media”. I am at a real disconnect with that one. I see folks like Bill O’Reilly, Shawn Hannity, Joe Scarbourough, Dennis Miller, and others; promote the news in a far from unbiased reporting style which is of a very conservative flavor. I see others, such as Dan Rather, Ted Kopple and a few others put their more left leaning “spin” on the news. As an aside on Dan Rather. Are you old enough to remember when Richard Nixon was being taken to task over the Watergate Scandal, and the various press conferences? There was one known as the Saturday Night Massacre, where Nixon fired the special prosecutor looking into the cover-up. It was none other than Dan Rather, who asked the tough questions of Nixon that were not couched with a soft ball presentation. Nixon, shortly after that Saturday Night Massacre, resigned the presidency, rather than face impeachment. It was the media that kept our government honest, not the politicians. Believe it or not, these web boards that you and I exchange ideas on, are also a form of “Media”.
Many conservative posters on these boards decry the outrage given out by the press and by Americans, over the photos of the abuse in the Abu Ghriab prison by some MP’s on duty there. There is a disdain for anyone who thinks this is wrong. Yet, these same detractors say very little, if anything at all, when those from the top of the command down, are also outraged. People and the press are vilified as “weenies” and cowards if they are offended by these photos that the media put out. Yet, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, General Myers, John McCain, General Agizib, and many others in the camp that conservatives are very gung-ho to support, are also outraged and say it publicly. Why then, do they not call Bush, Rumsfeld, et al, “weenies” and Cowards”, when they too state their outrage over the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. Major General Taguba wrote a scathing indictment of the lack of command leadership there that may have led to the abhorrent behavior over there. Is he also a left wing weenie?
You may remain skeptical Big Duke, over the assertion that there were beating deaths that happened in that prison, I am not so skeptical, and neither are a lot of others. We have been shown photos (which you seem to resent exist for the press to print) of a corpse of a detainee who reportedly was beaten to death. Sure, you can claim it’s just some guy’s picture that was beat up by another Iraqi, but the investigations thus far tend to support the allegations outlined in the Taguba report. I feel we all do a disservice to ourselves and others, when we selectively edit out of the news, things that do not fit with our own draft of what we want to be true. The press is the one thing that keeps events from being covered up, and swept under the rug. Without the “media” you would not have known about the beheading of Mr. Berg. That video version of the “news” just so happened to be released to an Arab news station. The Internet truly has become the information highway, and if our own media is censored or filtered, we will only get the slant from organizations in other counties. I don’t know how that would fit your modifying term of “liberal” in front of the word “media”. I want to see the perspectives from the American press as well as the foreign press. I want to see the warts and blemishes. Only then can I make informed decisions of my own, about those people I entrust to run my government. We employ these folks (politicians) and they are accountable to you and me. It is the media that issues the report card on them for you and me to evaluate how we feel they are doing their job. That is what freedom of the press was intended to do, by our founding fathers.
