Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey on Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll’s statement confirming that the propaganda statement she made was done under coercion. Carroll had come underfire and lambasted by some conservative bloggers for it, and some of their earlier posts questioned whether she was a victim or not. Morrissey was NOT one of them. In, fact, in his earlier posts, Morrissey had taken her at her word and noted that even POWs were expected to make these kinds of verbal bargains to stay alive.
On Carroll’s statement:
Had the Iraqi Army released a video like this during the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom with Jessica Lynch, all of us would have immediately understood it to be nothing more than a cheap propaganda trick. Why did so many in the blogosphere not understand that the same dynamic was at work with Jill Carroll? Was it the widely-distributed picture of her wearing traditional Muslim garb and severe glasses that made us forget that she had been the victim of a kidnapping and kept under threat of force for almost ninety days? Now that we have a new picture of hers to use, does the initial reaction seem a lot less understandable?
In this event, we gave the terrorists their talking points by jumping to an unfair conclusion. The reaction of people to her statement gave the terrorists credibility that they never would otherwise have had and ensured that their propaganda got the maximum amount of play. The real story is contained in this statement, made when she finally got out of the war zone — and it will never get the amount of play that her initial report did.
Finally, for those who blamed her for being in Iraq in the first place, let me remind you that we have continually harped on the media for being balcony reporters — for not getting outside of the Green Zone and trying to get the true stories of Iraq. Well, that’s what Jill Carroll tried to do, and she got unlucky enough to get kidnapped for her efforts. We need reporters to take those kind of chances, and we should have been more supportive of her all along. Now that she’s home, let’s hope we remember that with the next reporter unfortunate enough to find themselves the victim of violence and not victimize them a second time when they cooperate enough to be set free.
This only the last three paragraphs. Read it all.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.