Media Arrogance Or Military Failure?

The death of two journalists at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad is back in the news again. Turns out that a group aptly names the Committee to Protect Journalists has issued a report deploring the deaths as "avoidable."

The arrogance displayed by the writer of the article is amazing. She believes that nothing said by the US military could possibly be true. She is willing to jump to conclusions and condemnations without giving the Pentagon an opportunity to conduct their own investigation. And it's not as if the report she's basing her argument on is from an independent organization, it's from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

She basically accuses the officers involved of manslaughter (she admits that the deaths were unintentional). But were their actions really "unreasonable and grossly reckless?"

They suspected they were enemy fire from the direction of the Hotel. They had evidence pointing towards an enemy spotter in the direction of the Hotel (and the Hotel was the tallest structure around. If you're going to perform reconnaissance wouldn't that be where you wanted to be?). They saw a binocular flash (indicative of a spotter maybe?) from the Hotel. They asked for permission to fire and the request went all the way to the battalion commander.

I see nothing unreasonable or reckless about that sequence of events. The tank felt as though it was under fire, recognized the potential problems with firing in that direction, asked for permission, and then after three different levels of command had analyzed the situation, a decision to fire was made. Where is the unreasonableness?

The problem that the writer has with the situation is that journalists died. She hasn't a lick of concern about the safety of lives of anyone other than the journalists.

In a moral universe, there is no excuse for killing journalists under any circumstances.

Not everything in this universe is moral. There are some things that are evil. There are times when innocent people will die in tragic and unfortunate circumstances. The fact that they're journalists doesn't make their deaths are more or any less tragic. To say otherwise is the height of occupational conceit.

Media credibility isn't in the toilet because of the embed program or because some journalist once chose to actually believe something they were told. No, media credibility is down the drain because of the blatant and sickening elitist attitude that many journalists take.

The author is right. The public does need accurate information so that we can make informed decisions.

The problem is not with failing to "defend the rights of the nonembedded media," the problem is with the media not being able to provide unpoliticized coverage of the story.