When Journalists Allow Themselves To Be Manipulated
Things have been going well in Iraq. We haven’t won, but everyone from the editorial board at the New York Times to the Democrats’ point man on defeatism John Murtha has been forced to admit that we’ve made progress there. While there’s still a good deal to be done on the political front, it’s clear that the terrorists are on the run.
So it’s in that context that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visits Iraq, and is greeted by a series of bombings killing 22 people.
Now, a reasonable person would assume that these bombings are a desperate attempt by the terrorists to show that they’ve not yet been beaten, timed perfectly with a visit from a major American official for maximum media impact.
The problem? The media is more than happy to give the terrorists that impact:
There’s a problem when the media cannot report any news from Iraq without out first tinging it with negativity. Yes, car bombs went off in Iraq. But how is that related to Gates’ visit? Are they not two separate stories?
And at what point are these journalists going to realize that the car bombings are being staged almost entirely for their benefit? Al Qaeda is not going to bring the US military to its knees by setting off a few car bombs every week. But they can erode support for the war at home by making sure the media covers and sensationalizes those car bombings.
Iraq has been, from the start, a war waged both on the ground with weapons and in the media. And the sad part is that more often than not, whether the motives are driven by profits or politics, the media is on the terrorists’ side.
