January 27, 2005

Lies Cost Lives

Thomas Sowell's latest column takes aim at a particularly pernicious form of media arrogance and irresponsibility: the refusal to report accurately on military operations in Iraq. In particular, Sowell is incensed that reporters are eager to report every American casualty, yet rarely report enemy casualties.

This serves to distort the picture by downplaying the success of Coalition military assaults on "insurgents" (read terrorists).

If a battle ends with Americans killing a hundred guerrillas and terrorists, while sustaining 10 fatalities, that is an American victory. But not in the mainstream media. The headline is more likely to read: "Ten More Americans Killed in Iraq."

Sowell draws a historical analogy with WWII:

One of the biggest American victories during World War II was called "the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" because American fighter pilots shot down more than 340 Japanese planes over the Mariana Islands while losing just 30 American planes. But what if our current reporting practices had been used back then? The story, as printed and broadcast, could have been: "Today, 18 American pilots were killed and five more severely wounded as the Japanese blasted more than two dozen American planes out of the sky." A steady diet of that kind of one-sided reporting and our whole war effort against Japan might have collapsed.

The model for such slanted reporting, of course, is Vietnam, which too many contemporary reporters view as the Golden Age of media accomplishment.

But, as Sowell notes, such an approach can swing domestic opinion against a war that is winnable, because it convinces the home folks that the sacrifices under way aren't worth it. If we're going to lose no matter what we do, then why not cut our losses and run?

Of course, American news consumers have a much wider range of choices today, as readers of any blog know. Arthur Chrenkoff has just posted on Good News from the Muslim World, Part 4, which (as is the norm with Arthur) offers more excellent information than many hours of old style network news.

But Sowell's main point stands, because the New Media, for all their influence, still reach fewer people than the MSM. As others have pointed out, even listeners to talk radio shows often hear news updates from the AP or the CBS Radio Network -- hardly unimpeachable sources of information. True, the Fox Radio Network is set to grow rapidly, and it will offer a choice to program managers who now find their selection of reliable radio news limited. The trends are not in the MSM's favor, but time is key in the war in Iraq. As long as the MSM distort the news from the battlefield, they'll endanger America's mission in Iraq -- not to mention their own future.

— Winfield Myers

| Jan. 27, 2005 | 5:08 PM