December 1st 2008
Beyond Mere Frivolity And Bias
W
hile watching the Mumbai terror attacks on Fox last week, I heard a Fox anchor, safely ensconced in NYC, interview a frightened Indian man who was hiding in the Taj hotel. He was like a golf announcer, all whispers, and she was the soccer announcer, loudly leading the terrorists to their GOOOAAAL. It went something like this:
He (whispering into his cell phone): It’s very frightening, but I think I’m safe.
She: Are you safe? How? Where are you?
He: I’m in my room.
She: How terrible. Are you sure your safe? Where are you?
No kidding. She actually asked twice where he was, as if it never occurred to her that the terrorists might be monitoring the media to find more hostages people to torture and kill. And, it turns out the terrorists were doing just that, and Fox was hardly alone:
A SOUTH Wales couple caught in the Mumbai terror attacks claimed last night that CNN put their lives at risk by broadcasting where they were.
Lynne and Kenneth Shaw, of Penarth, warned that terrorists were listening in to the media to pinpoint Western victims.
Mrs Shaw claimed the American cable TV channel had broadcast details of where they were at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. …
From her home in Penarth yesterday, Mrs Shaw said: “We have been asked by the British terror police not to talk to the press.
“But the reason I would not want to talk to anyone is because our safety was actually compromised by CNN, which broadcast where we were.
“The terrorists were watching CNN and they came down from where they were in a lift after hearing about us on television. For that reason I would appeal to the media to be very careful about what they broadcast.
“When we left Mumbai there were still around 100 people trapped there.” (Wales Online)
The great war correspondents of WWII understood war and enemies and good guys. They were, by and large, discrete when it was important to be discrete, and honest journalists the rest of the time. With Vietnam, we got a new kind of war correspondent, becoming more anti-war as the war moved along, until they became a powerful force for our abandonment of the war. Their reporting may also have helped the North Vietnamese understand our troop movements and strategies.
Now we have a new generation of war correspondents, many of whom never leave their air conditioned suites, few of whom accept that we really are at war. They’re reporting incidents not battles, and they proved last week that they’re not to be trusted with sensitive information.
CNN, of course, denies the Shaw’s claim and I’ve heard no discussion whatsoever of Fox’s dangerous foible.
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