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Originally posted by Spanky
Wow. That is quite a statment. Are not the members of the American media U.S. citizens? Shouldn't they want to aid the American military and not provide aid and comfort to the enemy?
This reminds me of one of those Harvard seminars they showed on PBS where they had all these important people and some Harvard Law professor posed difficult questions. The Law professor asked Peter Jennings if he was imbedded with a North Kosanese Unit (Kosanese were the mythical enemy at war with the US) and they were approaching an American unit for an ambush, would he warn the American unit. At first Jennings said he wouldn't becuase his job was just to report, not get invovlved. But when the other panelists explained what an absurd position that was, he relented and said he would do whatever he could to warn the American unit of the coming ambush.
He realized that (even though he is from Canada) as an American citizen (or resident) his first loyalty is to the United States and second came performing the duties of his job.
Do you disagree with that.
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I don't disagree with that. But I also think that U.S. media ought to be in the business of reporting hard truths rather than softpedaling or avoiding bad news because it might "provide aid and comfort to the enemy." The reasons for this are both principled and pragmatic.
Suppose -- hypothetically -- that the country was at war in, say, Vietnam, under an incompetent Democratic president. We -- our country, our troops -- would be better off if the press was reporting on the president's incompetence, rather than covering it up for fear of giving aid and comfort to the Vietnamese.
