The Left continues its unhealthy rush to surrender in Iraq, and once respected institutions, like news magazines and newspapers, are prostituting their reputations to jump on any opportunity to smear the United States military.
The litany of compromised journalistic integrity is long, and lengthening rapidly. The reason for it is quite clear. When asked about what it would mean if the “surge” appeared to be succeeding, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said that would be "a real big problem for us.”
In truth, Democrats can’t afford American success in Iraq, and they’ll do all in their power to prevent it, ably assisted by their lapdog main stream media allies.
In the latest installment of bad news mongering, the New Republic featured articles by a “Baghdad Diarist” purportedly disclosing the "morally and emotionally distorting effects of war” in Iraq.
However, the previously anonymous author, Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, after stating that he stood by the entirety of his articles, signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods--fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of a source reporting to the Weekly Standard on a military investigation into the articles.
The New Republic may have established a new standard for journalistic chutzpah with the following as reported by the Weekly Standard:
In their August 2 statement, the New Republic's editors complained that the military investigation was "short-circuiting" TNR's own fact-checking efforts. "Beauchamp," they said, "had his cell-phone and computer taken away and is currently unable to speak to even his family. His fellow soldiers no longer feel comfortable communicating with reporters. If further substantive information comes to light, TNR will, of course, share it with you."
Unbelievable. Heretofore I thought journalists did their fact checking before publishing, not after.
Prior fact checking must be “old” journalism, not the “new” as practiced by the New Republic.
Of course, breathless “reporting” is nothing new for the Main Stream Media. When the misdeeds of Abu Ghraib were “uncovered,” the military had already discovered and were investigating the derelictions of duty committed by a few poorly trained and unsupervised national guardsmen.
I am positive that there wasn’t any direction from superiors to mistreat the Abu Ghraib prisoners, because my oldest son Bruce was there at the same time with a Nevada National Guard Military Police contingent, and they were commended for performing their duties competently and professionally.
Another journalist distortion was the reporting of the outing of “covert” Valerie Plame, supposedly as vengeance on her husband, Joseph Wilson, for contradicting the Bush administration on Iraq’s attempts to buy yellow cake uranium in Niger. Incredibly, the same news organizations that harped on a covert CIA being outed, also filed a “friend of the court” brief proving beyond a shadow of doubt that Plame was not covert.
These same news organizations continually brought up that Joseph Wilson reported that Iraq had not approached Niger about buying yellow cake uranium, even long after a Senate investigation determined that Wilson himself had reported that that was what Iraq had done.
Then, through it all, the media focused on “Scooter” Libby and ignored Richard Armitage, and the fact that Fitzgerald knew Armitage leaked to Novak before Fitzgerald even began his investigation.
After a while of this “news reporting,” I keep expecting to see Rod Serling step forward to inform us all that we had just experienced a journey through the Twilight Zone of modern journalism.
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