Sometimes you want to be anti-war so badly you lie - or print them
Posted by: McQ
The QandO Blog
Monday, November 07, 2005
Read the article (second link below).
My disgust should be fairly evident without having to rant about it. Apparently Sheehan and Massey are about as good as the anti-war crowd can get:
<<<
For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who would listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.
In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.
[...]
News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside of the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.
He wasn't.
>>>
He lied.
As serious as that is, just is serious is the fact that much of the MSM who printed his lies never bothered to check them out. Katrina reporting on a smaller level, but certainly something which those that reported Massey's lies should consider indicative of a very, very disturbing trend in what can now only euphemistically be called 'journalism'.
Yet somehow, I'm sure, defenders will claim there's no agenda present. I'd only point out that if that's true, then there are simply no ethics in journalism. One can only hope that those who did report Massey's lies without corroboration were indeed outside the mainstream of the MSM in terms of how it operates.
And speaking of ethics, let's see if the anti-war crowd keeps Massey around (I'm sure they will as he'd only be a correlary to the "forged but accurate" meme of which many on the left seem so fond ... I mean, look at Joe Wilson).
UPDATE: From the St. Louis Dispatch, a story which looks into the "journalism" of the Massey stories. Read these first paragraphs carefully:
Media outlets throughout the world have reported Jimmy
Massey's claims of war crimes, frequently without ever
seeking to verify them.
For instance, no one ever called any of the five
journalists who were embedded with Massey's battalion to
ask him or her about his claims.
The Associated Press, which serves more than 8,500
newspaper, radio and television stations worldwide, wrote
three stories about Massey, including an interview with
him in October about his new book.
But none of the AP reporters ever called Ravi Nessman, an
Associated Press reporter who was embedded with Massey's
unit. Nessman wrote more than 30 stories about the unit
from the beginning of the war until April 15, after
Baghdad had fallen.
That seems to me to be a lot more than sheer incompetence. When you write 3 stories, for instance, about a subject, including an interview with the subject, there have to be things which should be corroborated. Have. To. Be.
And there were either 5 or 6 journalists who were embedded with that very unit, one of which worked for AP. Yet none were ever contacted.
Nothing at all suspicious there, huh?
<<<
Editors at some papers look back at the Massey articles and are surprised that they ran them without examining whether the claims were true or without ever asking the Marine Corps about them.
"I'm looking at the story and going, 'Why, why would we have run this without getting another side of the story?'" said Lois Wilson, managing editor of the Star Gazette in Elmira, N.Y.
David Holwerk, editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, said he thought the newspaper handled its story, a question and answer interview with Massey, poorly.
"I feel fairly confident that we did not subject this to the rigorous scrutiny that we should have or to which we would subject it today," he said.
Rex Smith, editor of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, said he thought the newspaper's story about Massey could have "benefited from some additional reporting." But he didn't necessarily see anything particularly at odds with standard journalism practices.
>>>
Note that not one of them said, "you know what, we just shouldn't have run that without corroboration."
Sad.
How about a little pause for a "reality check". You know, a reminder of how it is supposed to work:
<<<
Michael Parks sees it differently. He is the director of the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism and formerly the editor of the Los Angeles Times. Parks also reviewed stories written about Massey.
"A reporter's obligation is to check the allegation, to seek comment from the organization that's accused," said Parks, a Pulitzer Prize winner who covered the Vietnam War as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. "They can't let allegations lie on the table, unchecked or unchallenged. When they don't do that, it's a clear disservice to the reader."
>>>
But then, check this out:
<<<
In many cases, journalists covered Massey as he was speaking at public gatherings. Some reporters said that because he was making public statements, they didn't feel an obligation to check his claims. Some editors worried they could be accused of covering up his claims if they didn't report on his speech.
>>>
And that reduces them to an organ that republishes press releases, talking points and the like.
<<<
Phillip Dixon, former managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and currently chairman of the Howard University Department of Journalism says:
"We're not stenographers, we're journalists," Dixon
said. "What separates journalism from other forms of
writing is that we practice the craft of verification. By
not doing that, that's saying they're abdicating any
responsibility from exercising news judgment."
Parks expands that:
"Still, if the person making the allegation has spoken at
a public forum, and the audience has heard it, the
obligation of the reporter remains to get the other side."
To do any less makes them precisely what Dixon says they're not: a stenographer.
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