Dec. 05, 2004 - 19:12 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Damned If You Don't

There are a couple of media people who always have my immediate attention when they have an article in our paper. Cokie and Steven V. Roberts -- now carried by United Feature Syndicate. While I was still watching TV she seemed to me to be responsible, sensible and far-seeing. Steven I knew not but he must have had a lot on the ball to marry her.

On December 3 there was an article in the Rocky Mountain News by them. In full:

Journalist in Iraq is no traitor to our nation's ideals

"To some supporters of the Iraq invasion, Kevin Sites committed an unpardonable crime. He showed the public what that war is really like. A respected and battle-tested veteran journalist, Sites was working for NBC when he followed a detachment of Marines cleaning out enemy resistance in the city of Fallujah. His camera recorded the scene when one rifleman entered a mosque containing wounded Iraqis and shot a man who appeared to be unarmed and defenseless."

"As Sites later wrote on his Web site, "I knew NBC would be responsible with the footage." And they were, explaining in detail the strains and fears facing the Marine in such a confusing combat situation."

"But Sites was also the "pool" cameraman that day, meaning that his tape was distributed to other news organizations. And Arab language outlets like Al-Jazeera have run the footage continuously, inflaming their viewers and embarrassing American forces."

"Sites was in Fallujah only because the Pentagon decided to "embed" reporters with military units and allow them free rein to report what they see."

"That seemed like a great idea to war supporters when the stories focused on victorious liberators, but now that American troops are struggling to pacify the country in the face of a determined insurgency, many don't want the world to see the unvarnished reality of urban warfare."

"To its credit, the military has not censored or punished Sites, and that's probably because the "embedding" program serves three purposes in the Pentagon's information strategy. First, it creates heroes. During he first Gulf War, and even in Afghanistan, strict limits on press freedom filtered out good news as well as bad. Countless stories of valor and honor went untold."

"The second goal was to bridge the culture gap between professional soldiers and journalists, who live in different worlds and understand little about each other."

"The third aim was to provide a truth-telling mechanism on the ground to counteract the propaganda campaign generated by the other side. But journalists are equal-opportunity truth-tellers. If they are there to document the lies and deceptions of Saddam, they are also there to record the mistakes and misjudgments of American troops."

"The job of people like Sites under very dangerous conditions, is to tell all sides of the story, the gore as well as the glory, the victims as well as the victors. Whether Al-Jazeera runs their reports is beside the Point."

"That's not an easy job, because the Pentagon strategy worked. Journalists who live and travel with the troops usually develop an enormous respect and affection for them. Sites was no exception, and he admits in his blog that he briefly considered destroying the tape of the Falljah shooting."

"But that thought," he adds, "created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away." Sites is a patriot, not a traitor. He was preserving the most basic value that separates America from almost evry other country: free and open debate. The public deserves to know the full cost -- in moral as well as monetary terms -- of invading another country. Hiding that cost won't make it go away.

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In my mind Cokie and Steven wrote a great article.

Which brings to my mind the barring of photos of military caskets coming back to the United States containing the bodies of those who gave their all for their country. Wonder what dingbat insisted on that ?

We need journalists who truthfully report what they observe and hear, to my mind that is the main requirement for a reporter.

Then perhaps other media can come out with conclusions and guesses. But the facts are needed first.

Nowadays the media are the "messengers," ones who are damned if you do and Damned If You Don't . . . . . . . . .

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