posted on March 19, 2004 11:47:22 PM new
Fri Mar 19, 6:33 PM ET
BERKELEY, Calif. - Competitive pressures and a fear of appearing unpatriotic discouraged journalists from doing more critical reporting during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, according to reporters and others at a conference on media coverage of the war.
The journalists on the panels at the University of California at Berkeley this week blamed the Bush administration for leaking faulty information, but said the media also has itself to blame for not being more skeptical about the case for war.
posted on March 20, 2004 12:10:51 AM new
Yup. Jingoism, pure and simple. Why are we not surprised?
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Have you noticed since everyone has a Camcorder these days no one talks
about seeing UFOs like they used to?
posted on March 20, 2004 08:13:18 AM newThe only government representative at the conference that ran Tuesday through Thursday was Lt. Col. Rick Long, a Marine Corps spokesman. He deflected accusations that the Pentagon (news - web sites) decision to embed about 700 journalists with troops fighting in the Iraq war allowed the government to influence their coverage.
"The reason we embedded so many journalists is that we wanted to dominate the information environment," Long said. "We wanted to beat any kind of disinformation or propaganda by beating them at their own game."
This goes into the 'just can't win' file.
The left complained that this administration wasn't going to allow reporters to join the troops so they could report WHAT REALLY GOES ON.
They were proven wrong...the reporters WERE allowed to join the troops.
Did that make the angry left happy? No....now they're working from the angle that the embeds didn't report the news as it REALLY happened...because they were scared.
Maybe this should go in the 'you'll NEVER do anything that pleases them file'. Because if the results don't come down the way they want/wish them to....there's always an excuse to not accept the way things really happened/were.
