Saturday, October 28, 2006

What's so wrong with showing Patriotism in the Media?

I wasn't around during World War II. I wasn't even a gleam in my daddy's eye then. I don't know firsthand what it was like to live in America during that war. But it certainly appears that things have changed in America since then, especially with the mainstream media.

I have been frustrated by news outlets like CNN airing terrorist propaganda recently -- the sniper attacks on American soldiers in Iraq. I've been frustrated by the one-sided reporting of the efforts of the war -- the body counts, ABC's Nightline airing lists of dead soldiers. And the list goes on and on.

In this recent confrontation (H/T to Michelle Malkin's Hot Air) on Wolf Blitzer's CNN show, Lynne Cheney asks Blitzer "Do you want to win this war? Why are you showing this terrorist propaganda?" Blitzer's party line response: "We're just reporting the news. We're not partisan, we're just reporting the news."

The mainstream media have this 'purist' attitude, that they have to report the "unvarnished truth" -- or says CNN in their response to questions on why they are airing these videos.

There is no such thing as a single truth. There are many sides in this conflict, as there was in World War II. But the media chose then to report only the side that would help our cause, boost American public and troop morale, make us feel proud and strong, get everyone behind the effort to win what was arguably a war to preserve our civilization.

Would it be so wrong for the media to show American bias? Would it be so wrong to show the good guys winning the war? Would it be so wrong to show the good guys blowing up terrorists? Would it be so wrong to show Iraqi students back in schools built by American hands and dollars?

I can find that on the internet, but not on CNN, not on MSNBC, not on Katie Couric's bottom-feeding CBS Evening News.

Pundits on the left call the war in Iraq a 'quagmire.' They compare it to Vietnam, a long, bloody war, also not supported in the popular media.

I say: media, democrats, ACLU... look in the mirror if you think Iraq is a quagmire. You're the cause of the war stalling, the war not being won outright. Every time you report a story graphically showing American soldiers being killed; every time you show terrorist fighters succeeding against American soldiers; every time you leak stories of American strategy, or American secrets, or American soldiers harrasing islamic terrorist prisoners...

You stab America in the heart.

It seems to me that Americans would have cried 'Treason' during earlier wars if politicians or the media had made the same choices they're making today. I'm American, and I'm shouting "TREASON".

2 comments:

  1. You're exactly right about CNN and most of the rest of the media. They ignorantly treat the war on terror like a sporting event where a journalist shouldn't root for one side or another. No, in real life there are clear cut cases of good and evil.

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  2. I think it goes beyond that. The media have the idea that they're the 'fourth column' -- the protectors of freedom in our society. At least, that's the garbage they taught in journalism school.

    I'm thinking that's why they have the 'holier than thou' attitude. In their soulless, misguided way, they think they're protecting our society from the evils of the government and the military.

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