[Editor's note] If I were working in a combat zone and seeing my friends killed by Improvised Explosive Devices, I can't think of anything that would infuriate me more than arriving at the scene of the latest blast and have my wounded friends tell me to ask the press what happened since they were at that spot waiting on the blast to occur. Then, when approached, the press dances you around with mumbo-jumbo about being "professionals" who must protect their sources. If I had an inkling that they were trafficking with the enemy, they would be able to practice their profession and protect their sources from the bottom tier of a prison charged with sedition. Some professionals! I'd rather have a sister in a whorehouse! Lonnie

COALITION SOLDIERS QUESTION NEWS MEDIA FOLLOWING ROADSIDE BOMB... http://palaceofreason.com/Curmudgeon/firing_up.html
Francis W. Porretto June 5, 2004

Either I've been teleported inter-dimensionally to a world where black is white, Kirk is evil, and Spock wears a beard, or a significant occupational group has declared its colors, and they're not red, white, and blue: COALITION SOLDIERS QUESTION NEWS MEDIA FOLLOWING ROADSIDE BOMB MOSUL, Iraq - Coalition soldiers questioned two news media cameramen and a reporter after a roadside bomb exploded near a Coalition convoy two kilometers north of Mosul June 3. The media, who were at the scene prior to the attack, told soldiers at the scene they had received a tip to be at that location prior to the attack and they had witnessed the explosion. There was minimal damage to a Coalition vehicle, a cracked windshield, and no serious injuries. 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division soldiers requested the media accompany them to a base camp in Mosul to answer questions as witnesses to the incident. The news media representatives left the base camp in the mid afternoon. [from CENTCOM's June 3 news release. Reference courtesy of Sarah at Trying To Grok. This is now the habitual behavior of so-called "journalists." If precedent holds, it will not get a lot of play in the Old Media. It's up to us of the New Media to spread it as far as we possibly can. Imagine yourself in the situation described. Imagine receiving a tip, from a source you had some reason to believe, that an explosive ambush had been prepared in a particular place, and that lives were at hazard as a result. What would you do? Without reference to the identities of the bombers, their probable victims, or any other element of the tableau: what would you do? Wouldn't elementary human decency oblige you to tell whoever might be able to avert the atrocity, and urge him to check it out? Wouldn't that be compulsory for anyone with a shred of regard for human life? Had the above incident happened in any part of these United States, the "journalists" would be indictable as accessories before the fact to attempted murder. What will happen to them in consequence of events as reported from Iraq is anyone's guess. Mine is that they'll step away unscathed, legally and occupationally. Legal questions to the side, how can a decent man, whatever his nationality or trade, merely watch as others hurtle into deadly peril -- a peril of which the observer could have forewarned him? What price "objectivity," "impartiality," or any other euphemism for this sort of callousness? Will their "journalist" brethren remonstrate with them for having watched in silence? Not if recent interviews with high-line "reporters" like Mike Wallace are any indication. More likely, the Mosul miscreants will be patted on the back and lauded for having upheld the "standards" of the "profession." Which brings me to another bit of spleen stokage: "journalists'" self-attribution of "professionalism." If there's a word in the English language that's been abused worse, I'm unaware of it -- and I'm the dictator verborum for the New York Metropolitan area. A professional is emphatically not just a white-collar employee who draws a salary instead of an hourly wage. A professional is emphatically not just a tradesman who takes his work seriously. A professional is one who professes a code of ethics that takes precedence over his own interests. Medicine, law, and the clergy, the trades traditionally called professions, all conform to that stricture. Persons in each of those trades must swear before witnesses to a code of ethical conduct that obliges them to lay down their own lives rather than break its rules. "Journalists," while claiming exemption from any ethical standard whatsoever in the name of "objectivity," nonetheless call themselves "professionals." The word is infinitely too good for them. Given the way they routinely deceive, distort, and suppress vital news when it suits their editorial agendas or political proclivities to do so, they aren't even honest workmen. Some will say that "journalists" do uphold a standard of sorts: "protecting their sources." Please! That isn't an ethically based constraint; it's an attempt to retain a competitive edge over other "journalists" who don't have access to the source, and to protect the source from the consequences of any lies he might utter. It's so selfish a precept that it defies comparison to any notion ever advanced as moral or ethical. In the name of "protecting their sources," "journalists" have spread the foulest of calumnies, ruining lives and reputations wholesale. Now, in the name of "objectivity," they're allowing other men - American soldiers, who volunteered to take up arms and risk death in service to their country! -- to walk into harm's way unawares. They sit and watch, with cameras rolling, as the crosshairs of Islamist insurgents and terrorists settle on the chests of American men at arms. People think lawyers are a plague upon the land. At least lawyers, though they might leave you broke, will leave you your life. Who is teaching "journalists" that this is acceptable behavior? Is it their older mentors and role models? Is it the journalism schools and professors of communications? Or is it We The People, by consuming their product in blissful disregard for the poisons in the recipe? Shame on them. Shame on all of us. If this is the way "journalists" regard their occupational obligations and perquisites, they're as dangerous to our men at arms as the weapons of the enemy, and should be treated as such.

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