Since my role at TMV has developed into occasionally questioning the points made by the other bloggers here, who mostly fall left of center, I’ll answer Joe’s glib take on an interview Donald Rumsfeld did with Rush Limbaugh. I have no doubt, as sourced blogger Boston Progressive says, that “Rush is not going to ask any questions that are off-script” with Rummy. That’s what his audience wants, since they largely sympathize with the embattled defense secretary (unlike a certain neocon journal).
But Rumsfeld’s statement…
They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it. They’re much better at (laughing) managing those kinds of things than we are.
…is indirectly backed up by a new book by a leading terrorism researcher with no love lost for antiterrorism legislation. I had the fortune to see Gabriel Weimann speak Wednesday in DC on the subject of terrorists’ use of the Internet. The central premise of the talk was that terrorism has developed into an incredibly media-savvy enterprise. Al Qaeda’s website 10 years ago was quite “primitive,” to use Weimann’s term, but is now a first-class destination for sympathizers – and possibly media. Weimann said that journalists are often fooled by terrorist websites so slickly designed and marketed that they don’t appear to have any connection to terrorism at all, and those journalists use the information on those sites in their reports. For the record, Weimann said he opposes legislating the takedown or blocking of terrorist websites, which would hurt academic research and intelligence gathering. He’s no administration stooge, despite the publishing of his book by the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Boston Progressive also pans Rummy’s irritation over decreasing numbers of reporters embedding with military forces. I won’t assign any bad motives to journalists who decide against embedding – surely they would miss certain things happening, were they in the company of troops for days or weeks at a time. But they are potentially missing equally worthy stories by not embedding as well. Western reporters are still relying mostly on local stringers for reporting outside their hotels, the Green Zone and a few Western-heavy neighborhoods. The choice for them may be embed or stay home, and simply cover events with heavy security.
Stories while embedded aren’t likely to be hard news – explosions, protest marches and such. But they could turn out to be quite insightful portraits into neglected aspects of everyday life for embattled Iraqis and troops, which could work quite nicely as a Sunday NYT or Post feature (or that great neglected paper, the Christian Science Monitor). Guess which day has the highest circulation and readership for any paper? If someone can point me to a reporter whose embedding was on the whole a negative experience, in their view, I’d like to see the account. I’ve heard little but positive feedback from reporters – more than just Fox News, if you were wondering – on their embedding experiences. (To be clear: I don’t know any returning embeds, but I’ve seen their published accounts.)
I’m just a lowly trade reporter in DC, though, so I hope you make up your own mind, embracing that blogosphere credo to fact-check my ass and prove Matt Welch wrong.
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.