Linda Foley’s Mouth Shrills Again

Linda Foley is running for re-election as president of the Newspaper Guild, union for 34,000 in journalism. Foley is sticking to her phony charge, made in 2005, that the U.S. military was purposely targeting journalists in Iraq, not presenting any evidence then or now.

In 2005, this reckless charge created quite a stir, especially in the shadow of the Eason Jordan exposure as a CNN shill for Saddam Hussein’s regime. Foley was widely denounced, and the Boston Globe’s star technology reporter, Hiawatha Bray, briefly challenged her dominion of the union’s executive board. “Captain” Ed Morrissey commented then, Foley was “channeling Eason Jordan”:

[S]he's a symptom of a larger disease in American journalism. The threshold of publication for allegations has been lowered past "single sourced" to "sounds like it could be true", especially when it comes to covering the American military.

Of course, Michelle Malkin closely followed the unfolding of Foley’s mendacity. Here, Malkin has a 2005 comment from Hiawatha Bray:

For me, the most worrisome aspect of this entire affair is the realization that few of my colleagues are troubled by this in the least. They seem to believe there’s nothing at all to fret about when a prominent voice in American journalism feels free to slander American soldiers. Of course, there’s a great deal to fret over, if you care about the state of our profession and the good name of our fellow citizens. Or, for that matter, if you care about how journalists will be treated by soldiers in future conflicts. Will these guys ever trust us again? Why in heaven’s name should they, when we lie about them, without shame?

Editor & Publisher reports that Linda Foley is not only unrepentant but is repeating her calumny in attacking the candidate challenging her now for presidency of the Newspaper Guild, that opposing candidate trying to act more responsibly as a member of the media.

Her comments had nothing to do with job security, contract negotiations, or newspaper industry economics. Instead, she all but accused Lunzer of not offering enough support for freedom of the press because of his opposition to comments she made in 2005 about military attacks on journalists.

In a video posted on her Web site and on YouTube.com, Foley cites a moment during a candidates' forum last weekend in which some remarks she made in 2005 were discussed. Those included her accusing the U.S. military of targeting journalists in Iraq and citing the 2003 attacks on an Al Jazeera television studio and the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as an example.

Foley made the remarks during a panel discussion at the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis on May 13, 2005. She said at the time that those who bombed the Al Jazeera studios in Baghdad in 2003 had the coordinates of the television station, "because Al Jazeera had given it to them and they bombed the hell out of the station. They bombed it knowing it was the Al Jazeera station. Absent any independent inquiry that tells the world otherwise, that is what I believe."

In her video, posted this week, Foley recounted the comments.

"I made some very strong comments about how the U.S. military was targeting reporters and journalists, journalists from Al Jazeera television, journalists from Abu Dhabi television, and journalists staying at the Palestine Hotel," she recalled in the video. "When I said those remarks, I then was attacked by the right wing for a period of two to three weeks. Very intensely."

She adds that she "stood steadfastly behind the journalists" and notes, "For me, that is a critically important issue for the president of the Newspaper Guild to uphold."

Foley then says in the video that Lunzer stated at the candidates forum that he would not have made such remarks. "My opponents, in his retort, said he would never have said what I said. He would not have stood up for those journalists who paid the ultimate price for freedom of the press. I was outraged by that."

Lunzer, the current secretary-treasurer, told E&P that he was responding to a question about the Palestine Hotel attack specifically, saying "I just would not have made the comment." He later added, "There was no proof they set out to attack the media at the Palestine Hotel."

For those who may have forgotten what the Palestine Hotel incident was about: During the 2003 taking of Baghdad, many unembedded journalists stayed in the hotel, observing the fighting from their high-rise balconies. U.S. forces were taking light and medium weapons fire from the vicinity of the hotel. A U.S. tank unit, 3/4ths of a mile away, eyed an enemy spotter in the hotel, a spotter being those who direct enemy fire, and fired one round at the hotel’s 15th floor, accidentally killing two journalists in the process. Left-leaning media took up the charge that the tank targeted innocent journalists. Although journalists entering a combat zone in the midst of the enemy fighters have no special rights, many journalists felt they did have impunity to casualties nonetheless.

The left-leaning Committee to Protect Journalists did a selective investigation. All it managed to come up with – despite innuendos and strawmen questions -- was that, although the Pentagon and senior military commanders knew there were journalists in the hotel, and tried to avoid aerial bombardment therefore, the tank commander didn’t have that information. Reporters Without Borders, similarly, decried the “breakdown” of communications.

It criticised the investigation report, obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act, for focusing entirely on the behaviour of the Alpha 4-64 Armor Company, whose tank fired on the hotel, and for not dealing with why the higher military command did not pass on to the unit information it had about the occupants of the hotel.

Jules Crittendon, of the Boston Herald, however, was an embedded reporter with the very tank unit that had fired its round at the hotel. From Michelle Malkin’s 2005 archives:

...here’s an excellent letter on the Poynter site from Boston Herald reporter Jules Crittenden:

2/12/2005 4:26:49 PM

From JULES CRITTENDEN, Boston Herald: I am alarmed that Steve Lovelady, managing editor of CJR Daily, is baffled by the uproar over Eason Jordan’s remarks. If this helps, it is because Jordan reportedly accused American soldiers of purposefully murdering journalists, without citing any evidence, and without his news organization having reported it. While he backtracked and claimed he was misunderstood, apparently CNN found his transgression serious enough to accept his resignation.

I am also alarmed that the editor of a major media watchdog publication’s web spinoff would cite a report titled “Two Murders and a Lie” (Reporters Without Borders, and apparently without standards) to support Jordan, as well as the similarly flawed “Permission to Fire,” (Committee to Protect Journalists) both of which offer selectively reported and distorted views of the Palestine incident that are peppered with inaccuracies and speculation. There is no evidence to support accusations of either murder or lying in the Palestine incident.

By way of disclosure, I was embedded with the tank company that fired on the Palestine, and was within 100 yards of the tank that fired on April 8, 2003. Sgt. Shawn Gibson saw what he thought was an Iraqi forward observer in a tall building. We had been alerted that an Iraqi FO had eyes on our position an hour earlier. The tankers had been in combat for up to 30 hours by the time Gibson fired, and after a particularly heavy pre-dawn counterattack was repelled, continued to be plagued with mortar fire and RPGs — including fire from the east bank of the Tigris and from tall buildings. In a month of combat operations with A Co. 4/64 Armor, I witnessed numerous examples of restraint when the tankers put themselves in danger in order to avoid killing civilians.

Any suggestion that American soldiers have purposefully killed journalists in Iraq is repugnant, ignores the facts and reflects a disturbing bias. The failure of a major media watchdog publication’s editor to get this is also disturbing.

Is it any wonder, then, that Steve Boriss, Associate Director for the Center for the Application of Information Technology at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, writes of Linda Foley and her candidacy at Boriss’ blog The Future Of News:

…Since journalists are allegedly obsessive about only spreading verified facts, you might think Foley would want to avoid bringing-up her irresponsible statements, rather than use them as a campaign issue. Clearly, something is seriously wrong here.

The problem is that in Modern Journalism “freedom of the press” is not about the freedom of all Americans to speak and publish their thoughts, or even about Americans at all. It is all about them — the freedom of journalists themselves, from whatever country they come from, to do whatever they want to do. In fact, she was condemning losses among journalists from Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, which are based in countries that do not even pay lip service to “freedom of the press.”

It may also be noted that it was Linda Foley’s union local at the Washington Post which scotched the paper’s promotion of a patriotic march in Washington, D.C. in 2005.

It may also be noted that Linda Foley has not been heard from denouncing Al Quaeda’s purposeful attacks upon the journalist inhabited Palestine Hotel, as for example these in 2004 and 2005:

Exact casualty numbers are unknown, estimates range from 5 dead and 16 wounded to 20 dead and 40 wounded. This is not the first attempt on the Palestinian Hotel; al Qaeda took a stab at the Palestine in May of 2004 in an attack that killed 29 and wounded over 50.

While al Qaeda was banking on a huge casualty count, along with the deaths of international journalists caught on film, the attack failed due to the quick reaction of the Iraqi police and the unnamed U.S. soldier.