“Attack of the Killer Journalists”
Well, not really.
But Iowahawk’s clever satire about journalists run amok makes a good point about the absurdity of the recent NY Times article on crimes committed by returning vets.
That Times piece is an excellent example of failure to include all-important comparative statistics in an article that one can therefore conclude has been written with an agenda—in this case, to portray vets in time-honored post-Vietnam fashion as broken victims/perpetrators, crazed and traumatized by their military service.
There is no question, of course, that some vets suffer from combat stress disorder, or what used to be called shell shock or combat fatigue or neurasthenia. There’s also no doubt that, in a population composed mostly of active young men, some of them are going to be disturbed and crime-prone prior to entering the service, and even the best screening devices cannot eliminate them all.
But it’s also clear that the number of crimes reported by the Times as having been committed by recent veterans is lower than would be expected by chance in a similar population, something the Times utterly fails to note.
There have been a host of articles critiquing the Times piece, such as this, this, and this. So no need for me to do so here, except to say that the article falls into the MSM lack-of-context pattern I noted recently here.
And, as an Instapundit reader wrote to Glenn Reynolds, it might be nice to see a few tales of a different sort in the MSM to balance out the score:
Perhaps some enterprising young journalist will endeavor to tell the stories of young men and women whose lives were on the wrong track, joined the military, and can now rightly be considered among America’s finest. I’ll bet they’d find many, many more such stories out of the pool of Iraq/Afghanistan vets than the 121 “murderers.”
Of course, such articles would be anecdotal as well. But I join the Instapundit commenter in assuming that this sort of situation is actually far more common than its opposite, what has become known as the “wacko-vet” story.
But it wouldn’t serve the needs of the Times nearly as well.
Someway somehow, the print newspapers will be able to turn this stuff into gift certificates for misery. To be given to other folks and non-journalists, of course.
Very early on in my education of how the “corporate” media works, I’d ask myself: “What? Do they just make this stuff up out of thin air?
The answer of course, is yes. Yes they do.
A media outlet cannot be an agent of political influence on it’s “news” pages, AND practice excellent journalism.
NYT Publisher Pinch Sulzberger disagrees. In doing so, Mr. Sulzberger denigrates the value of journalism. Ironically, Mr. Sulzberger thus reduces the value of the NYT, which thus reduces the ability of the NYT to be an agent of political influence.
As a loose rule, only highly educated persons are able to deceive themselves as Mr. Sulzberger has.
The funny thing is that it only takes one guy with the power and the need to crush innocents and this can cause a cascade wave of damage, utilizing all of the fruits of Western civilization. Every engineering department taking care of the commercial and video uplink customers in every broadcast studio is helping to output the message of this one guy with power and a need to do some fearless stomping. All of the competent technicians and support personnel that is needed to ensure that all the video and audio feeds are working, that all the commercials have the correct time slots and dubs, are automatically slotted as accomplices to the one megalomaniac that thinks he knows what people need.
It mirrors how AQ could easily turn America’s technological savvy and opportunities against her so simply and quickly.
Our society is ordered, instead of Arabic chaotic and inshallah fatalistic. This means that it only takes one saboteur to mess up everybody’s day at work. And even if that gunman and bomber takes himself down with him, as the New York Times is doing to themselves, they will create copycats and motivate other people into copying them. Such an insurgency will never end so long as people think they can win. And people think they can win because to them the rewards offset the risks. Thus the obvious answer must be, increasing the risks for them.
Ymar: Mtsu is going to say you’re just being paranoid and that you should be more like him and just take all that we have for granted.
Nothing is worth risking. The values that created our societies are disposible.
To recongnize how special and fragile our wealth means you’re a deranged partisan.
Just listen to Mitsu.. Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha will protect us.
Ok, so like yeah, the media lies. The media distorts and the media has a liberal slant. But so what? I have here a report from the NYT’s of a study done at a leading university that says blue state guys are smarter, happier and better looking than red-state guys.
So you see, there’s no need to believe in such things as a conviction or uphold standards or anything, because that just makes you look like an extremist, and being smack-dab in the middle mediocre is exactly where you want to be.
/channeling Mitsu
Man, I so wish I could catch the knack for humorous disdain like y’alls got.
I’m so jealous.
Btw, ma’am. Outstanding series of articles lately. You’re always worth the time and effort to read, but the last bit of awhile, you’ve been extra special.
A turn around, gangster to Marine, Navy Cross winner. (Navy Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor).
Hard Corps: From Gangster to Marine Hero
In case I screwed the pooch on that linky thing… google
Hard Corps: From Gangster to Marine Hero
Here’s some new revelations of journalistic malpractice. Now this reporter is the same one who was involved with the Mohemmed Al Durha hoax:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/1963
Joel Pollak (no relation) reports on his blog that Charles Enderlin, the France 2 television reporter implicated in the Mohammed al-Dura fabrication, admitted at a talk at Harvard last night that the famous scenes of Yasser Arafat donating blood after the 9/11 attacks were, like the footage of the IDF killing al-Dura, staged:
“Enderlin said the event had been staged for the media to counteract the embarrassing television images of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.
“The blood donation story made headlines around the world. It was reported by esteemed news agencies like the BBC, and photographs of Arafat lying with an outstretched arm ran on many front pages. But the whole scene was staged, Enderlin said. Arafat didn’t like needles, and so the doctor put a needle near his arm and agitated a bag of blood. The reporters took the requisite photographs.
Arafat, it’s worth noting, died in 2005 of AIDS, and it is thus a good thing that he didn’t actually donate blood. Is it possible that the reputation of the international press corps in Israel, especially its European members, could get any worse?
Thanks. That Iowahawk story had me in tears. The graph alone is priceless.
The NY Slimes continues its campaign against Vets:
“A series of articles and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/us/20vets.html?hp
DC Says, I read the article. It is incoherently written. Just a lousy article. From the article:
“In November, Mr. Smith called the Pleasant Grove police asking for help. The officer who was dispatched to his house was the one who had intervened in his suicide attempt five months earlier. Mr. Smith advised the officer “that he was having thoughts of taking the life of his girlfriend while she was asleep,” Captain Cullimore said. “He asked to be transferred to the hospital, which he was.”
This is never mentioned again!
OK, so what happened with that? How did he get released? How did they drop the ball? What did the officer have to say? How does the hospital explain obviously missing this? Where’s the rest of the story?!
Is this just stupidity and laziness that the reporters didn’t follow up on this part of the story?
Or do they just want to blame The War and The Military?
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