Something interesting I saw on a site new to me - talk about blatant media bias:
http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20031112.asp#4
CNN’s Paula Zahn attempted and failed to put anti-Pentagon talking points in former POW Jessica Lynch’s mouth. During the Monday night edition of Paula Zahn Now, she proposed to Time magazine’s Nancy Gibbs, who was on to discuss her interview with Lynch featured in the November 17 issue of the magazine: “She feels quite used by the U.S. government, does she not?" When Gibbs rejected the characterization, Zahn remained undeterred and issued another claim which Gibbs also undermined. Zahn maintained that Lynch “has also made it quite clear she's resentful” of how imagery of her rescue was used “to support the war effort."
Zahn started out by asking if Lynch had cleared up any misconceptions in their interview: "What did you learn from spending time with the family that we didn't know before? Any misconceptions cleared up?"
Gibbs replied: "There are a lot. There's one that I think she's really intent on clearing up, which is one that has caused her some pain, the whole story we heard of the sort of Rambo warrior who went down fighting, fired off all her ammunition, fought to the death. She's brutally honest that that bears no resemblance to what she did."
Seizing on this Zahn prodded: "And she feels quite used by the U.S. government, does she not?"
Gibbs clarified: "What she feels bad about is that people came away with an impression that she was something other than she was. She said, you know: 'I didn't fire my weapon. It jammed. I couldn't do anything to defend my comrades.’ Everyone else who was in that Humvee with her the day it was ambushed died. She's the only one who survived. And it's very painful for her to have discovered when she came back that she was getting credit as being some great heroine or great warrior who had fought so fiercely, when she didn't. I think she's quite determined to set that record straight."
Zahn then insisted: "She has also made it quite clear she's resentful of the fact, is she not, that this imagery was somehow used to -- I guess, she has alleged, to support the war effort?"
Gibbs corrected Zahn: "I think that may be going too far. There's nothing she said in all the time we spent with her that was negative about anything other than the very specific intelligence reports about the role that she had played. She views the Army and she views particularly the guys who came in and retrieved her from the hospital as her heroes. She says the idea that this was staged or this was phony or this was all for propaganda is crazy: They got me out. And she is so thankful that they did. And that's the other thing I think that she wants to make clear. All the reports that -- we asked her, did you hear reports that maybe that rescue wasn't what it seemed to be? And she said: 'I was there. I know what happened. And those guys are heroes.’" |
