Egg-Faces
By Callimachus | Related entries in Bad Decisions, Blogging, In The News, The War On Terrorism, The WorldThe Jill Carroll story someday will be told in full, but already it’s offered a painful (I hope) lesson for a great many right-side bloggers and talk radio hosts. When the kidnapped reporter’s final recorded statement in captivity popped up on an Islamist Web site, the ant-Iraq War, anti-Bush, pro-insurgent rhetoric of it fit many people’s preconceived ideas about U.S. media in Iraq.
And so they jumped the smoking gun.
But it was pertinent for any sane person also to ask whether the video footage was made under duress. And any reasonable person would have withheld judgment on it until that was answered. But for too many folks, when politics walks in the door, reason goes out the window.
Now there’s a lot of egg on a lot of faces. Some have been big enough to apologize. Whatever the actual beliefs of Jill Carroll, and whatever the collective attitude of U.S. media types in Iraq, what happened here was a mini-lesson that this “reporting” business is a lot more difficult than some people imagine.
It’s a constant balancing act between your innate suspicion and skepticism, on the one hand, and the facts as presented by the people you talk to. The trick is to never scuff out the line between what you can say for sure and what you suspect. When journalists are caught doing that, bloggers rightly raise a cry against them. Well, there’s a saying about what goes around.
Jim Geraghty of NRO seems to me to have the appropriately scolding tone for all this:
Carroll issues a coerced statement before she’s released, and some corners of the blogosphere erupt with a torrent of scathing hatred, declaring that Carroll “may as well just come right out and say she was a willing participant�, that she’s a “spoiled brat America-hater� and “she was anti-America when she went over there and I say the kidnapping was a put up deal from the get go.�
NRO being NRO, he points out that on the left side there was a bit of over-reaction to the over-reaction. Speculations about Stockholm Syndrome do not automatically cast one as an insensitive reactionary lunatic.
And in the “so sad it’s funny” category were those in the anti camp who, in the hours after the release of the videotape, beat their chests and scolded the war supporters for not accepting the “Truth” and the “Facts” of what Jill was saying on camera.
But the crime, this time, was overwhelmingly on the right/Iraq War-supporting side.
And it did damage to the case some of us have been trying to build that there are institutional, collective, archetypal biases in U.S. news reporting from Iraq that require readers/viewers to look beyond the mainstream coverage and take it with a grain of salt. That case is in the collateral damage ward today.
As Geraghty puts it:
The citizenry around the globe has the greatest mass communications tool in the history of the world, and this is what it’s led to?
Rip the MSM all you want, but I read this stuff and I begin to appreciate editors.
Well, since I’m one, I could say “thank you,” but I don’t feel like that right now.
Rightwing Nuthouse also strikes the right tone.
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 and is filed under Bad Decisions, Blogging, In The News, The War On Terrorism, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 2nd, 2006 at 7:52 am
I am generally in favor of free expression. But in some cases, when treating some kinds of experience, we need to be very careful about opening our mouths and offering an opinion. You don’t tell a combat vet how brave you would be unless you’ve been there; and unless you’ve spent three months locked up with images of decapitations playing on a loop in your head, you think very carefully before critcizing someone who has.
It’ so easy to be fearless and resolute from the safety of your living room.
April 2nd, 2006 at 11:25 am
Its not just the right side of the bloggisphere that has egg on their faces. I recall reading a post on Crooks-and-liars where the author praised her for her bold anti-Bush stance in the face of danger.
They blasted the conservatives who criticised her initial (now proven fabricated) statement, claiming it was another attempt to squelch dissent. I can’t find that particular post on their archives, apparently they were so embarrased that they took it down.
April 2nd, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Good advice for all who blog from the hip. It should also be a reminder that being Right or Left on every issue is most often rather silly, particularly when the “facts” aren’t yet facts, but speculation. Perhaps we all need to do a bit of real thinking before spouting baseless opinions. ‘Course, that’s just my opinion.
April 2nd, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Think like a human being first. Then put on your political uniform.
April 2nd, 2006 at 5:22 pm
This goes to show you that ideologues are much more interested in symbolism than reality. When Carroll was captured, she was, for many, a symbol of how viscious and irredeemably evil the enemy was. But suddenly she’s on tape criticizing the war and she’s morphed into a symbol of how putridly anti-American the media is.
Makes you wonder if some of these offenders really even cared about this woman’s life.
April 2nd, 2006 at 5:23 pm
The Repudiation
Much is to be made of the blogging reaction of Carroll’s statements made, both those while still being held prisoner and those made immediately after her release. In fact, it appears that that subject is far more relevant to blogosphere discussion (a…
April 2nd, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Well said.
April 2nd, 2006 at 6:35 pm
People on the Right may be a little sensitive because of the ungrateful reaction of the “Peacekeepers” after their recent freeing. Carroll’s response today sounds very classy.
April 2nd, 2006 at 6:40 pm
Just out of curiousity, why aren’t any conservative bloggers linking to these liberals/lefties who were asserting the truth of Carroll’s videotaped statement?
I mean, I’m a liberal, I read liberal blogs, and I didn’t see anyone engaging in such rank stupidity. I guess maybe some tool in Atrios’s comments or on Democratic Underground made that comment. But, if they’re fair game, then the creatures who comment at LGF are fair game as well.
April 2nd, 2006 at 6:50 pm
“Think like a human being first. Then put on your political uniform.”
God, it’s so true..
April 2nd, 2006 at 7:15 pm
Geek, good question. They’re not hard to find, so I don’t know why people don’t link to more of them. Actually, the ones I have seen linked most often are comments left by anti people on pro-war sites like Beautiful Atrocities.
Here’s Think Progress, for an example of such a comment in a “liberal” blog post itself. Not a commenter, but the blog itself:
Not the only one, but you’ve drawn yourself a magic circle in advance by claiming the right to call certain undefined left/progressive/anti sites as unfair examples, so it’s likely not worth the time to come up with a full list so you can find reasons to disinclude all of them. So, there’s one for you.
April 2nd, 2006 at 8:33 pm
How To Alienate Yourself From The Blogosphere
Now why would someone erase comments if you disagree with them? What the heck is everyone in the entire blogosphere talking about? Threating? Hey, its not like its the first time. ….or the second time even. ….or even the third. Who need…
April 2nd, 2006 at 10:25 pm
Thx Callimachus.
Sad to see that there are people on my side as stupid as the Brothers Judd and Debbie Schlussel.
April 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 pm
The trap they fall into, of course, is exactly the one they accuse the media of being mired in — and sometimes correctly, I think. They allow a prejudice (in the literal sense of the word) to determine their perception.
They’re learning what used to be the first lesson of journalism: Reporting goes HERE, editorializing goes OVER THERE. You can do one or the other, but when you mix both you’re playing with some combustible chemistry.
April 2nd, 2006 at 11:31 pm
This discussion reminds me of the anti-American statements that were made by American POWs being held by the North Vietnamese. The statements were coerced, but the “anti side,” worldwide, certainly made the most of it. That was waaaaaaaaaay before the Blogoshpere; it was the MSM of the day that were taking sides even then.
Any journalist of that era should have been highly suspicious of what was coming out of North Vietnam, but few were — or so it seems.
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:35 am
“Think like a human being first. Then put on your political uniform.�
Yes, Cal.
Glass and Stones in the same space and time requires the excercise of … restraint?