Linda Chavez
Mainstream journalism has got to change its attitude in order to become Big Media again
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
It has been a bad year for mainstream journalism. USA Today
found one of its star reporters invented some of his stories. CBS got burned
by its biggest name — Dan Rather — when he ran with an anti-Bush piece on
"60 Minutes Wednesday" based on forged documents, right during the middle of
the presidential campaign. Several newspapers have had to deal with
reporters who plagiarized some of their articles. Now Newsweek has had to
retract a false story about American guards desecrating the Koran that
sparked anti-American rioting throughout the Muslim world, killing at least
17 people. And still the media scions seem not to have a clue why this keeps
happening.
Call it bias or just plain arrogance, but the media just don't
get it. The latest example is the most disheartening, and not just because
of the terrible loss of life. Fanatical Islamo-fascists are responsible for
the bloodshed, not the journalists who were merely unwitting dupes. But that
does not let those journalists off the hook or explain why they were so
quick to assume the worst about the U.S. military's tactics in the War on
Terror.
Journalists are supposed to be skeptical, that's what keeps them
digging rather than simply accepting the official line, whether it comes
from government or corporate bureaucrats. Where journalists have gotten
themselves in trouble over the last few decades is that their skepticism
often extends only to American officials, the U.S. military and Republican
politicians. Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek reporter who wrote the short item
on alleged abuses at Guantanamo that appeared in the magazine's Periscope
section, based his story on an unnamed government source. The usual
journalistic rule is to get at least one additional confirmation before
running with an anonymous allegation of this sort. Isikoff's excuse for not
doing so is that he vetted the entire piece with another unnamed official,
who apparently didn't raise objections to that specific part of the story.
But when the Pentagon vigorously denounced the allegation as entirely false,
Isikoff's "source" began having second thoughts and couldn't remember where
he'd heard the story in the first place.
Isikoff should have nailed that down before he rushed to print.
Why didn't he? Because it fit with what has become journalistic orthodoxy on
the War on Terror. Many journalists seem to believe that we have become
little different from our enemies. It is all about moral equivalence: The
enemy kills innocent people; we kill innocent people (though the media
grudgingly admit the latter occurs more often by accident). The enemy
tortures and beheads its victims; we strip ours naked and put hoods over
their heads while making them perform sexual acts. If you read only the
pages of the New York Times or most of the other big dailies or weekly
magazines, you'd believe that the United States — as a matter of policy —
seeks to degrade Muslim detainees at every opportunity.
In fact, the U.S. military has bent over backwards to respect
the religious beliefs of some very dangerous fanatics who want to kill us.
We give detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo copies of the Koran; we allow them
to pray and celebrate their feast days; and we strictly prohibit any
disrespect to detainees' religious beliefs and observance. The military has
gone so far as to proscribe who may touch the Koran and how it must be
handled. In a January 2003 memo, the Pentagon issued rules saying only
Muslim chaplains and interpreters can handle the Koran, and only after
donning clean gloves in plain sight of the detainees. The memo directs
personnel to use both hands when handling the Koran out of "respect and
reverence."
The Washington Post reported this information — but only after
Newsweek retracted its original story. Just as much of the media jumped on
CBS once it became clear that Dan Rather and company had been duped by
Democrat partisans during the campaign, the media is doing some
hand-wringing over the Newsweek flap. But mistakes like the one Michael
Isikoff and Newsweek made will continue to occur if the media refuse to
become as skeptical of those who hate America as they are of those who love
and defend her.
JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
