Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Yon on Haditha

As the media feeding frenzy around Haditha and the allegations of a massacre, Michael Yon takes the time to focus on the matter. As always with Yon's work, it's worth reading in its entirety.

What word, then, properly characterizes the recent media coverage of Haditha, when analysis stretches beyond shotgun conclusions to actually attributing motive and assigning blame? No rational process supports a statement like: “We don’t know what happened, but we know why it happened and whose fault it is.

That seems to sum up the matter. Yon goes on to make a point that hadn't really occurred to me-

To get the true context of how fairly any newspaper or media outlet is treating the military in general, and this war in particular, news consumers should consider how long it had been since that same source focused the same energy on the war. For some outlets, the last time the war really splashed was with Abu Ghraib.

Yon goes on to highlight some of the horrendous acts committed by the terrorists in Iraq, acts that the press in the US and elsewhere barely mention, if at all. I think that it's important to remember that while the media goes on at great length about Abu Ghraib and now Haditha, they have next to nothing to say about what the enemy is up to, day in and day out.

Whose side are they on?

1 comment:

Dag said...

I responded unpleasantly to your last comment at IBA. It's not worth reading. That's exactly the resposne you earned.