What Happened To The Media ?
Another difference is that Mauldin was out there every day with the troops, living with them and going through it all with them. He wasn’t spending his time in the damn Hilton hotel downtown doing his standups on the roof with a nice background and getting phone calls from stringers for “remotes”.
If he had a bias it was towards the soldiers, the grunts slogging through the mud and crap taking the losses, fighting the fight. Today’s “reporters” go out there with an anti-troop bias and bitch and whine if there’s no hot water or if their room isn’t changed daily. That fuckin’ self aggrandizing “hero” Geraldo fucking Rivera went back a while ago and his story was mostly about himself and a couple of bullet dings in his armored SUV.
Mauldin was about the troops and the war, today’s reporters are about themselves and their agenda.
I appreciate your accepting my suggestion, Skipper. The contrast could not be more stark. And Stin is right. Bill Mauldin led the life of a dogface, and he had a lot to say in Up Front about columnists, celebrities and others who fancied themselves authorities on the war, when many of them did not even get within earshot of the shooting. And let us not forget Ernie Pyle. Like Mauldin, he was about the dogfaces, the little guys who never asked to be there, who didn’t want to be there--but went, all the same.
Such reporters as Pyle and Mauldin were about men who were willing to die to give immortality to ideas such as freedom.
Today’s reporters are mostly striving to live in order to sell some hack screed for the highest dollar.
Stin,
You don’t like Geraldo F. Rivera? :} I just cringe when he reports from the ‘front lines’ because he always lines up a whole pile of soldiers behind as a nice backdrop. I always wonder how he does it. Then when he brings one of the soldiers on to talk, HE talks so much the soldier only gets in a few words. Embarrasses me to death. O’Reilly is starting a new feature: Thursdays with Geraldo. Bill is the only one I know who can make Geraldo shut up. I am not quite so harsh thinking he is self-aggrandizing as just really gung-ho. I watched him cover the elections in Iraq, and he actually cried. I have to respect the guy’s enthusiasm for bringing us the news.....even if I cringe a bit.
I only watch FOX so I can’t comment on other reporters other than to note the few times I watched MSNBC I got a severe case of the hates for Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. There’s a blog that’s designed just to trash Olbermann. It’s good. I think it’s called Olby Watch. They traduce the fool to bits of flesh every night.
Posted by Phoenix
06/26/2005 at 06:25 PM
He’s able to line up all those soldiers, Pheonix, because he’s nowhere near the action when he does that. They’re not about to provide such a tempting target anywhere near the enemy.
You’ll notice when Ollie North does a standup with his Marines there’s only one or two with him at the time. That’s because he’s right up front, or not far from it. Rick Leventhal is the same way. I used to look for Leventhal on the run into Baghdad. He was right there with the point of the spear. Rivera had already been bounced out of the country by that time because he briefed the plan on one of his standups. He denies it but that’s what happened. I saw him do it.
I saw him reporting from Aruba last week with Leventhal. He yacked and yacked forever then it was Leventhal’s turn. Rick started his report and damn if Rivera didn’t interrupt him to say even more and take over Rick’s spot. I don’t know what happened when the camera went off, but they didn’t appear together again. I’m hoping Rick gave him hell.
I don’t like his Walter Winchell imitation either. If you don’t know what I’m talking about just listen to his scripted narrations and compare them with the old “Untouchables” narrations. You’ll see what I mean.
Yeah, I watch (listen while I’m on the ‘puter) mostly to Fox. It’s probably a good thing that I don’t get CNN or MSNBC with this basic cable. I’ve already given up on the other alphabet combinations.
Stin, the news media alphabet combinations are alphabet soup. It doesn’t matter which letter-noodles you fish out of the soup. They’re all limp and drippy.
Absolutely correct, Tann. While Fox has a lot of admittedly right leaning personalities, they make every attempt to balance their discussions and they cover things that does not well serve what one might think of as “their side”. If it’s news they’re there.
Discussions/debates find both sides well represented and equal time is given. A rarity elsewhere.
The difference is that the alphabets deny their bias, do nothing to balance it and won’t cover news items that go against their agenda.
And they wonder why they are all heading down the tubes. Can’t be their fault, of course, Illuminati that they are. It has to be the fault of us poor, illiterate, fork-tailed devils out here in flyover country.
Pusillanimous pricks!
Stin,
Yes, I cringe at G.F.Rivera’s Walter Winchell style. I watched Ollie and War Stories tonight. He was in Iraq. Good show. Leventhal is a class act. FOX is very balanced and it is obvious they go to great effort to keep it that way. I did notice after Bush won this past election they quit trying to deny they were a conservative news outlet.
Roger Ailes must be one tough guy. I read in one of my news magazines a quotation from Mr. Ailes. Seems he walked into a trendy NYC restaurant and demanded to be seated at a table whereupon he was told the table was reserved for Ralph Lauren. Ailes said, “I don’t care if it’s reserved for Ralph Lauren. That’s not even his real name.” I’m assuming he sat himself and his party down. hahaha....
TANNY ! You said a dirty word. For shame. You go, boy.
Posted by Phoenix
06/26/2005 at 09:47 PM
Yes, Ollie made a good report tonight. It’s not all doom and gloom after all. It looks like there is real progress, despite what the MSM wants us to believe. Good news is sanctioned, of course. They’re going to make Iraq a quagmire if it kills them, and it may. If it doesn’t turn into a failure it won’t be their fault.
Just as an example: The recent rescue of Douglas Wood, the Australian held captive in Iraq, got very little, if any, coverage. I have a ‘breaking news’ subscription to ABC News (I forgot to cancel it with everything else the last time they pissed me off). They never used it to report his rescue. Just to be sure I searched their site. I found two AP stories about his rescue which were essentially the same story. That’s it. Period. I don’t watch their “news” programs so I don’t know if it was even mentioned on air. It’s good news, after all.
They are doing everything they can to undermine and denigrate our military’s efforts there and gleefully report their success when their polls reflect the growing concerns that their prostitution of their profession has fomented. I’m wondering why Kosovo still isn’t a quagmire yet. Oh, wait, I remember who ordered that “one year deployment”, nevermind.
