I guess that’s my main frustration with the situation.  Plastering this accross our airwaves persuades no one of anything.  Those who were already convinced the war on terror is worthless will be pissed off all over again.  I just don’t think it’s the right time.  No one can change the past, we are there & that will never have not happened.  Pulling out immediately will make it worse.  Like a marriage: perhaps it never should have happened in the 1st place, but once the two have constructed a life together, it takes a painful process to deconstruct it.  Bailing will only make everything worse.  This is actually an AP article, but no one else is posting it. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,138794,00.html

So you think that the shooting should be covered up because it doesn’t portray the war in an appropriate manner?  Are you arguing that we can’t handle the truth?

you may have wanted it read that way, but i don’t think ellie is implying that we should cover up the truth.

I wasn’t supposing anything, I’m asking Ellie what she’s proposing.  She suggests that the media shouldn’t be making such a big deal about the shooting.  She also suggested that the reporter should have just notified the military authority and not reported upon the story.  I’m just wondering what her stance on the freedom of the press and our right to know what is going on in the world.  I’m not saying that she’s claiming that there should be a cover-up, I’m asking her if that is what she’s supporting.  If you look again at my previous comment, you will note the question marks.

I just noticed in my 2:21 post there’s a typo, the first word should be “Do” not “So”....  That might make it clearer that I’m not insinuating anything.  I’m just curious as to what Ellie’s stance is when it comes to journalism and war.

oh, ok.  that ‘do’ made all the difference.

You may disagree, but I don’t think it would be considered a cover-up to wait to report until after the military had dealt with it.  You might even have a lot more to report & be given more trust & access by the military in the future.  I think journalism & war is a very difficult area to know anything for sure, so I go on a case-by-case basis.  “We” being the entire country, (including the unthinking & insanely obsessed) shouldn’t “handle” the truth before it’s complete.  I think the biggest problem is impatience.  I don’t think it’s humanly possible to know all sides of a story so quickly, so whatever one’s biases they will come out IMMEDIATELY.

But I AM fairly certain war is the one area of journalism that can mean life or death, & where timing is EVERYTHING.  I KNOW all of us would feel differently if that soldier or his fellow soldier was killed were our brother/boyfriend/son/father/friend.  That’s what got me fired up.  I’d allow my loved one a continent’s worth of leeway in his judgement to protect himself. Even as en uninvolved observer, that insurgent had been injured fighting against them before...ah I digress.  War goes by the rtule: “may the most skilled live.” I didn’t see malicious intent in that killing.  Even mistaken/unjustifiable, it was for the purpose of self-preservation, not hatred.  Yet I wouldn’t mind waiting a few months for the military to make that judgement & then decide for myself if I agree or not, & I trust that the military could itself pressure it’s members to use more caution to avoid similar events.  Soldiers fear a court-marshall & prison more than they do bad press.  They could care less what some pointy-headed intellectual says about them.

Journalism, by it’s very nature assumes authority cannot be trusted, while the masses can.  The military is BUILT on the principle of trusting authority (whether they deserve it or not) to control the dangerous elements of the masses.  But I also think freedom in our republic is great when used responsibly because it requires two such opposed institutions to work together so that the most people can have freedom.

i guess we would rather look at how fucked up our guys are as apposed to the fucks we are killing and that just makes me ill.

We know that the other guys are fucked up, and we can’t do anything about it save for fighting them.

But ‘our own guys’* ?

We SHOULD be very concerned when they fuck up. They are OUR responsibility. They reflect on US.

*parentheses because I’m not a US citizen.

I agree with ingolfson, yet probably have a different view of how to deal with that concern & responsibility than most people, as I previously subjected you all to from my soap box…

You may disagree, but I don’t think it would be considered a cover-up to wait to report until after the military had dealt with it.  You might even have a lot more to report & be given more trust & access by the military in the future.

I for one disagree.

The media shouldn’t be a PR department of the military and government or worse, devolve into an arm of the Ministry of Propaganda and National Enlightenment. They specifically should not be chummy with the powers that be to get greater access, because this amounts to accepting a set of golden handcuffs.

What the media should do is report the unadorned facts of this war and as much as they can get hold off at that. War is certainly Hell, but the answer isn’t to sugarcoat it, but to make sure that nobody can plead ignorance about what’s happening there.

The whole misadventure in Iraq stems from the effort to control the flow of information. Our Dear Leader wanted to show his balls to the Amercan pepil. His syncopant advisors tripped all over themselves making up shit and their partners in crime in the winging wrulitzer mind controled or browbeat everyone (almost) onto the bandwagon of war. The grown-ups were ignored or RIFed out of the picture.
SO YES BUSH IS FUCKIN DIRECTLY RESPOSIBLE for destroying this young mans life.
Stress is not a valid defence for an execution style murder. This will haunt him the rest of his life, if he doesn’t end up killing himself.
But God dammit those News Reporters are to blame!! Ya! Right!

I for one can’t wait for the next presidential decision on tax code & social security to be based on a reality show giving footage of starving old people where the audience calls in to vote BEFORE the SSA investigates to find out the older person was actually a libertarian living out his social ideals & going on hunger strike by choice, that’s the answer!

ellie,

It seems that you are quite cynical when it comes to the media.  Just because something makes it onto TV doesn’t necessarily mean it’s contrived.  Indeed, I will grant that you do have to approach any form of media with a grain of salt.  However, you seem to suggest that everything on television is to be completely dismissed as misleading.  This seems to me to be a far too extreme position.  Also, I think your last post unfairly portrays the elderly as frauds trying to grift us out of our money.

In no way would I say EVERYTHING is to be COMPLETELY dismissed as misleading.” I was exaggerating & happened to pick the elderly at random, actually because my grandfather said exactly that: he’s a libertarian & he said he’d go on hunger strike before ever cashing a SS check.  I just patiently wait to see more sides, I’m afraid of people basing a vital decision before all the facts are in EXACTLY as that soldier did.  Al Jazeera, for example, is showing that footage with nothing blacked out nonstop, yet has refused to show the shooting of Margaret Hassan as “too graphic.” I don’t think either is contrived, but showing one without the other certainly displays a bias.  & though the Iraqi died, it’s not inconcievable that there could have been a bomb under his clothes.  If we had a tape of a booby trapped faking dead Iraqi killing our soldiers, I wouldn’t want to see it over & over, or base any blanket policy on it.

One might likewise say that some are quite cynical of the military.

ellie,

I admit I am fairly cynical when it comes to the US military.  That might be because I have friends who served with The Princess Patricia Light Infantry.  The Canadian unit that got bombed by the US airforce in Afghanistan.  Despite being in a training area well within allied lines and explicit orders to stand-down two USAF pilots dropped bombs on a company of the Princess Pats while they were performing training exercises.  This combined with the shear number of friendly fire incidents (CNN has a listing of all US and allied casualties and provides a report of how each was killed on their website and besides improvised explosive device the leading cause of death was friendly fire or non-combat weapon accidents) and other incidents involving the killing of unarmed civilians seems to suggest to me that I have good reason to question the US armed forces training doctrine.

leading cause of death was friendly fire or non-combat weapon accidents

the fact that there are more deaths from accidents and friendly fire than enemy action doesn’t really mean anything.  it could be that the enemy really sucks at kill us, or that we excell at killing them.

It seems that the American military excels at killing itself and its allies as well.  Which to me is indicative of a problem with training.  A little more discipline when it comes to discharging one’s weapon would likely benefit a great number of US troops.