The most important thing to any intelligence agency is to be perceived as credible by the users of their intelligence. If their credibility goes, nothing else they do matters. In recent years the MSM have had their credibility increasingly brought into question. Their reaction is to sweep the problem completely under the rug, shuffle a few top level executives or declare that it was just a few low level staffers that caused all the trouble. Like the cheating husband when caught “Who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes”.

These responses do not enhance the MSM’s credibility, they destroy it. They will first have to acknowledge that they have a credibility problem. Then start a public and transparent process to root out the causes of the problem and set up ways to stop it from happening again. All this will have to be subject to massive public scrutiny and comment. Blogs and the Internet could be their salvation in this but they instead see them, not their own actions, as the problem. We have seen much denial and some anger and depression. Still waiting on the bargaining and acceptance.

It’s our duty as citizens to destroy these Fifth Columns. They are going to cost us our lives eventually.

A start is complaining to organizations like Yahoo that use Reuters that we object to their service. Investor services is probably most sensitive to complaints.

http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/comment.cfm

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From the PBS panel series Ethics in America, devoted to war coverage, which was taped at Harvard in late 1987.

“Ogletree pushed (Mike) Wallace. Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something rather than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot?

“No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!”

Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said.

“I chickened out.” Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached.

As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, everyone else in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror. Retired Air Force general Brent Scowcroft, who had been Gerald Ford’s national security advisor and would soon serve in the same job for George Bush, said it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. “What’s it worth?” he asked Wallace bitterly. “It’s worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon.”

Ogletree turned to Wallace. What about that? Shouldn’t the reporter have said something?

Wallace gave his most disarming grin, shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms wide in a “Don’t ask me!” gesture, and said, “I don’t know.” He was mugging to the crowd in such a way that he got a big laugh – the first such moment of the discussion. Wallace paused to enjoy the crowd’s reaction. Jennings, however, was all business, and was still concerned about the first answer he had given.”

If nothing else, we know about the Stockholm Syndrome. No photographer is allowed to successfully perform their duties in Lebanon, on a continuous basis, unless they serve the interests of Hezbollah. These thugs will not hesitate to harm somebody who gets in their way. An “accident” can always be arranged.

Thus, as doug fputs it: “Because the media believes that there is no ‘better’ side, it willingly allows itself to be used by the ‘worst’ side. It ‘chooses’ to be a voice for the ‘enemy’ simply because it does not so see them. There can never be an ENEMY.”

Or rather the media has decided that the bad guy is White-Euro-US-imperialism (eg, Israel), and therefore the victims of historic oppression can do no wrong. Their coverage fully reflects this committment and its institutionalization.

Which is why I don’t trust the MSM, or as shrinkwrapped calls them, the LSM.

Nothing to see folks, move along, move along…

SADLER: Well, we do get some of them on camera. The interesting point is that we’re seeing a lot more presence of Hezbollah’s MPs, two of them are in the parliament here giving statements. We’ve had one of them coming on air speaking English.

I’ve been watching Hezbollah since their birth some 25 years ago, almost 25 years ago, they really are learning very quickly the power of the international media that’s here. Once upon a time this city was a no-go capital for journalists like us to come to, during the kidnap years. But Hezbollah is certainly learning — and has learned very well — how to play the media card in getting its message out.

Excellent summary, wonderful piece. I wish all the leading papers would run this (with links) in their OpEd pages next Sunday.

cathy

KURTZ: hold on, you’re suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it’s fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that’s what military analysts have told me.

What is even more disgusting about this canard is that it is not coming from a Reuters reporter but from a Washington Post reporter. The MSM has truly become the enemy!