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Thursday, December 09, 2004
Value Added Reporting
New background on the "shot heard round the world" yesterday - a question to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait, posed by a soldier in the audience about what is now being termed "hillbilly armor". Today, Drudge is reporting that the question was planted by an imbedded reporter.
Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts is embedded with the 278th Regimental Combat Team, now in Kuwait preparing to enter Iraq, and is filing articles for his newspaper. Pitts claims in a purported email that he coached soldiers to ask Defense Secretary Rumsfeld questions!When reached Thursday morning, various Chattanooga Times Free Press staffers offered 'no comment' on the development.
[full text of his email here]
While it appears the soldiers have a legitimate complaint (though, apparently not a new or immediately solvable one), the media reporting on the incident would have us believe that the question was unexpected.
Why is the distinction between a legitimate spontanious question and a legitimate, but media planted question, important?
It's this type of manipulation that chips away at the legitimacy of the profession of journalism - not because the question is false, but because it makes us pause, and wonder what other "spontanious" questions from "the audience" are planted by reporters looking to manufacture and/or enhance contraversy for the purpose of increasing the "sale" value - both literally and figuratively - of their story.
In the case of reporter Edward Lee Pitts, it was a story he'd already written and submitted.
(update - The media reports assume a premise of "more armour good, less armour bad". A roundup of opinion and observation about the question is well covered by Instapundit. Go read it, before forming any opinions about the criticism.)
Posted by Kate McMillan on December 9, 2004 in Media | Permalink
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Comments
It sounds like 60 Minutes ambush journalism by proxy.
Stunts like this notwithstanding, the decision to embed journalists may have been a "success for the military, the media and the public":
http://www.rand.org/news/press.04/12.07.html
Posted by: Charles MacDonald | 2004-12-09 3:28:28 PM
Even if this is true -- and Drudge regularly prints untrue stories -- it doesn't change the validity of the question, the inappropriateness of Rumsfeld's response or the fact that all the soldiers cheered the question. How was the question any more "staged" that the "town hall meeting" itself?
For the life of me, I can't understand why supporters of the war in Iraq would want to ignore the mistakes that have been made and attack critics rather than consider the criticism... You make a mistake, adjust and adapt your plans; don't continue blindly in the same direction out of arrogance. Don't shoot the messenger.
Posted by: JKelly | 2004-12-09 4:10:24 PM
The post isn't about the validity of the question, if you'll read again carefully. It's about journalistic ethics.
Posted by: Kate | 2004-12-09 5:03:09 PM
No, the debate over journalistic ethics is a diversion staged by those who didn't like the question or the answer.
These town hall meetings are all constructs, staged media events that reporters report as "news." So a reporter encouraged a member of the unit he was embedded with to ask a question, a question that the soldier felt good about asking, a question the soldier wanted to know the answer to... And this is a scandal how?
This reporter is a genuine journalist. He didn't just sit back and report on another carefully orchestrated press event. He helped a soldier phrase his concerns and get positioned properly to ask the question.
We're talking about a reporter from Chattanooga, Tennessee, who played the game out of concern for the unit he is embedded with, who wanted to help the troops he is with. Again, if the U.S. Government wanted distance between the troops and reporters, they shouldn't have come up with this embedding business.
Posted by: JKelly | 2004-12-09 9:51:25 PM
2Slick has an excellent post on town hall meetings in the military and the propriety and substance of the complaint:
http://2slick.blogspot.com/2004/12/rumsfelds-visit.html
Posted by: Charles MacDonald | 2004-12-10 8:31:35 AM
I'm trying to square up the two statements "genuine journalist" and "helped a soldier phrase his concerns".
It would be very odd if some Canadians managed to pump themselves up into indignation over the lack of armour on American humvees, while at the same time being silent on Canadian soldiers' lack of armour, uniforms, flak jackets, helmets, guns, bullets, tanks, helicopters, planes ...
The bottom line is, no country on earth treats its soldiers as well as they would like to be treated. Some countries treat their soldiers better than others. Canada is in column 'B'.
Then again, it's not about the treatment of soldiers is it? It's all about scoring points on neocons.
Posted by: Justzumgai | 2004-12-10 9:21:25 AM
So, the question was not made by somebody with any special knowedge of the situation in Iraq (it came from an undeployed soldier who doesn't know the conditions in Iraq yet and was cheered by undeployed troops); was stage-managed member of the media using the soldiers as a PR vehicle; and revealed nothing new, since this was talked about to death in the just-completed Presidential campaign.
What was valid about the question again? Oh, yeah, it gave Administration critics a meaningless talking point. How noble.
Posted by: Anonymous | 2004-12-10 10:57:24 PM
So, Rumsfeld went to speak to a bunch of undeployed solidiers and asked them to ask him tough questions why then? Because he hoped they wouldn't ask him relevant questions? Because it was just an elaborate PR stunt?
Check out William Kristol's piece about Rumsfeld in the Washington Post today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A132-2004Dec14.html.
When supporters of the war -- like, uh, the troops fighting it -- are critical the way it is being run, it isn't because they are anti-war or looking to "score points," but because they want to win the friggin' war.
Posted by: JKelly | 2004-12-15 10:57:09 AM
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