Reuters: Begging to Be Mislead
Ranting Profs
By Cori Dauber
Reuters puts out a story about events in Afghanistan, and it's pretty cut and dried, nothing especially unusual about it, except that after reporting that Coalition forces say that they've taken control of some village somewhere the reporter notes:
Taliban spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.
Good God almighty.
When reporting on events in a domestic peacetime context back in the US or Europe, when one side says "X has happened," it is appropriate for a journalist to attempt to get a comment from the other side. When a political candidate makes a claim, for example, reporters try to get a comment from the other campaign before going to press, and if they can't get one, this is the formula they use for noting that fact. If a claim is made against a government official, this formula works. You take my point.
But this is a war -- and a war against an enemy who believes propaganda is an important tool, an enemy who can be expected not to spin, but to lie. In this context this formula makes the reporter (and the wire service for which the unnamed reporter works) look foolish. The appropriate comment would have been "Coalition claims could not be immediately confirmed." That lets readers know that these claims are just that -- claims -- but that the reporter has not been able to independently verify them.
But getting a comment from the Taliban isn't going to help a reporter seek the truth one way or the other, and suggesting it will makes them look the fool.
I do not expect reporters to take every statement from the US military as the gospel truth simply because it comes from the US military. But I do expect them to recognize the fact that this is simply not a war between two sides of equal credibility.
At what point are they going to realize that?
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