GUEST OPINION: Not so fast, Tribune, in dismissing Swift Boat Vets' testimony
Thursday, September 02, 2004
- by Peter LaBarbera
[Photo from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth website.]
OPINION -- There was something almost quaint about the Chicago Tribune’s editorial assertion August 24 declaring that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth controversy surrounding John Kerry’s war record was over.
Forgetting that we are in the midst of a “new media” revolution that allows everyday Americans to investigate truth claims on their own - without the clouded filter of biased journalists - the Tribune editors wrote, “That should be the end of the debate about John Kerry's experience in Vietnam.”
Days before, the Tribune had injected itself prominently into the presidential campaign and the Swift Boat controversy by giving front-page play to the printed recollections of Metro editor Bill Rood, who served with Kerry and challenged the SBVT’s contentions surrounding the incident that led to Kerry’s Silver Star.
The Trib’s Rood story was splashed all over the national media yet, conveniently, Mr. Rood did not take questions about his testimony. That left Tribune deputy managing editor George De Lama to do interviews with a mostly compliant media.
“[Rood] felt compelled to set the historical record straight, which is what we do as journalists when we're at our best,” De Lama told MSNBC’s Scarborough Country.
One question I doubt Mr. De Lama was asked is this: Why isn’t the Tribune using its substantial investigative resources to fully set the record straight on the many questions surrounding John Kerry’s Vietnam service? (For a good summary of the Swifties’ concerns, see their letter to John Kerry on their website: www.swiftvets.com.)
It’s that old media double standard we know so well (and hate): The same reporters who seriously pursued the George Bush-AWOL-from-the-National Guard story-after being spurred on by Democrat National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe - are almost reverential about John Kerry’s Vietnam War claims. The media often sound like the DNC echo chamber in dismissing the Swift Vets story.
The great news is the media’s glaring double standard just doesn’t matter as much anymore. Thanks to the Internet and hugely popular conservative talk shows like the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity shows, politically incorrect books like John O’Neil and Jerome Corsi’s Unfit for Command now receive the serious treatment and exposure they deserve - rather than being relegated to cultural no man’s land as in the past.
Gone are the days when liberal bookstores and snobby book reviewers can snuff out conservative books and stories they don’t like. Now we, the people, are free to decide for ourselves what’s newsworthy - and it’s scaring the wits out of hard-core liberals, as evidenced by their escalating harangues against Fox News.
The democratization of the news and information business has substantially lessened the power of major media - and hence their ability to abuse that power through unbalanced, cynical reporting.
For all the Left’s lectures about censorship, it is committed liberals who are the knee-jerk censors - and those in the media do most of their work by selective reporting. Perhaps some young readers are simply unaware of the incredible power the liberal media once had to control the news, and hence the political, agenda.
Now, due to the explosive growth of alternative media sources - from Web bloggers to popular talk shows - big media corporations like the Tribune, New York Times and CBS can no longer dictate "what is news" on major controversies. (Ask yourself: who’s more powerful, Dan Rather or Rush Limbaugh?) Of course, they still have tremendous power to skew the debate.
But back to the Tribune, which gets too much credit in media circles for being “impartial.” (I sure don’t see it on social issues.) I emailed their senior news executives and asked, “Given the special role the Tribune has played in discrediting one part of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's allegations, aren't you ethically bound to devote the Tribune's full investigative resources to probing the rest of their claims?”
I received a nice note back from national editor Bob Rowley, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for the Trib to expose Kerry’s falsified war claims.
Strangely, the same newspaper that sued to dig up Blair Hull and Jack Ryan’s divorce papers can’t muster up the will to pressure Kerry to execute Standard Form 180, which, according to Unfit for Command, would “allow the public to have complete access to his military service record.” This is one way to evaluate the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s allegations.
Never mind that the Tribune joined the rest of the media in pursuing the Bush-AWOL story. Never mind that the Trib’s review gave four stars to Michael Moore’s deceitful propaganda film Fahrenheit 911. (For an excellent critique of this film, see Dave Kopel’s “59 Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11,” at davekopel.com. The Tribune, like the rest of the old elite media, and like Kerry, just want to move on to “real issues,” as they say.
Well, the Swift Vets story is about real issues, because it cuts straight to the character of one John Kerry, who - as most Americans know now thanks to the new media - told some left-wing whoppers about America’s fighting men when he returned from Vietnam.
Oddly, today’s journalists, who seem to view everything in political terms, have a hard time with the notion of defending the truth. That’s why they invariably portray the Swift Vets for Truth as a political operation, whereas the sense I get of these 200-plus men is they just want to set the record straight about this man from Massachusetts whom they regard as an opportunist and a liar who dishonored his country.
Of course it matters a great deal if one of the men running for Commander in Chief lied repeatedly about his past - and about our nation in a time of war. But if the Trib doesn’t want to get to the bottom of the story, rest assured that others - be they talk show hosts or a Web bloggers - will. The smart move, if Tribune execs want to stay relevant, is to fully probe the rest of the Swift Vets’ claims.
For now, though, let us rejoice as conservatives in this truth: The liberal media monopoly is dead! Long live the new media!
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