Monday, July 04, 2005

Michelle Malkin is too kind

New Republic editor Peter Beinart says conservative talk show hosts headed to Iraq are not "real journalists."

Michelle Malkin sets Beinart straight on that, and reminds him of what some "real journalists" at his own magazine have done, including an associate editor fired for fabricating stories.

I think Malkin was too kind. She could have reminded Beinart of journalist Eason Jordan and CNN's deal with Saddam's regime: Access for CNN in exchange for softball reporting.

Who's not qualified to provide coverage from Iraq?

And Malkin didn't mention Dan Rather and CBS's statement that their then anonymous documents source was "unimpeachable," even as they knew Bill Burkett was a longtime Bush-hater and Democratic activist who had demanded access to a top Kerry aide, Joe Lockhart, before turning over the documents to CBS.

How many hundreds of journalists "reported" the Jennin massacre that never happened?

I could go on but today's a holiday.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, it is easy for her to be kind to those less abled than she is. :-)

Anonymous said...

To be a journalist requires at least the presumption of objectivity. If the sole purpose of their trip is to show how swell it's going in Iraq, why bother to go at all? After all, the Pentagon is perfectly capable of cooking up uplifting tales such as the rescue of Jessica Lynch or the herioc death of Pat Tillman fighting the enemy.

There is one question which we don't have answers for, however. They should repeat President Bush's oft stated rationale for the war in Iraq: "We are fighting terrorists abroad so we don't have to face them at home." Just how do the Iraqis feel about having their country turned into the central battleground in the war on terror?

Under Saddam, folks like Zarqawi were confined to a corner of Iraq. Now he has the whole run of the country to plant bombs and kill innocent civilians wherever he pleases.