Mark Yost[*1] has set off
a firestorm[*2] . First, from Yost’s article:
Why do they hate us? Where does one start? This isn’t a prelude to a column justifying why the Islamists hate Westerners so much that they’re pouring into Iraq to kill our soldiers (along with innocent fellow Arabs, including Egyptian diplomats). Or defending the sleeper cells planted to blow up Madrid, London and who knows where next. Rather, it’s about why most Americans, particularly soldiers, hate the media.
Then, the firestorm:
It’s astonishing that Mark Yost, from the distance and safety of St. Paul, Minnesota, presumes to know what’s going on in Iraq. He knows the reporting of hundreds of brave journalists, presumably including his own Knight Ridder colleagues Hannah Allam and Tom Lassetter, is bad because his Marine colonel buddy tells him so.
It is interesting that in all of the hypersensitive reactions that I’ve read coming from the mainstream media, not one has addressed Yost’s core question: why do so many in the active military have such a bad opinion of the press?
The reactions we’re seeing may be one reason.
It appears that the moral of this story is: never, ever, ever criticize the press. They are always right, and are never wrong. (If they are wrong on a front page story, the correction is on page A-28, which of course is never necessary). They never, ever, ever have an agenda or a preconceived notion of the story before they write it despite the fact that the press overwhelmingly leans left[*3] . Oh, and if you’re in an air conditioned home or office in the good old U S of A, you may not hold the view that Iraq is better off without Saddam than with him. This doesn’t explain the myriad of warbloggers (U.S. soldiers in Iraq who blog mostly good news and are more often than not horrified by the mainstream media coverage of the war), like our friends at Faces From The Front[*4] to which we offer a hat tip.
