I think the following quotation makes my point. The American press agreed to self-imposed restrictions, but the foreign press had no such obligation. Even if the American press felt free to report, some things were off limits. The tension that existed between these self-imposed restrictions and free reporting would necessarily cause some hesitation in full reporting...where the foreign press had none of that. As someone who occasionally listened to the BBC at the time, I can only say that my impression at the time was that their broadcasts were more forthright and accurate than those from American broadcasters. Originally Posted by charlestudor2005Honestly, I think it supports my point too. Per your citation, there were only two things—“off limits”—the press could not publicize: 1) was tactical information about units and personnel involved in ongoing operations. To publish such information always has been and always will be tantamount to treason; 2) pictures of identifiable dead and wounded. Even today, the press does not publish pictures of car wreck victims or the names of those so killed until the next of kin are notified. This is a humanitarian gesture to those still living and not a political cover-up. Is it too much to expect the same in regards to battlefield casualties living and dead? The Pentagon Papers and Watergate serve to demonstrate that the administration and DOD did not successfully control the message. The New York Times and the Washington Post were not successfully censored, nor were any others that chose not to be.
- I B Hankering
- 03-03-2011, 12:30 PM
- charlestudor2005
- 03-03-2011, 12:38 PM
No media is unbiased. It is human nature. PJ and CT kiss and make up. The ladies want to see it.As the ladies say, "This is a business." I'm don't LFK or DFK w/o receiving the envelope first. I'm sure PJ is the same. No free or discounted sessions.Originally Posted by SR Only
- Guest083011
- 03-03-2011, 12:39 PM
women talking gibberish Originally Posted by ninasastriI talk gibberish all day long. Embrace me ladies!!!
- charlestudor2005
- 03-03-2011, 12:40 PM
Honestly, I think it supports my point too. Per your citation, there were only two things—“off limits”—the press could not publicize: 1) was tactical information about units and personnel involved in ongoing operations. To publish such information always has been and always will be tantamount to treason; 2) pictures of identifiable dead and wounded. Even today, the press does not publish pictures of car wreck victims or the names of those so killed until the next of kin are notified. This is a humanitarian gesture to those still living and not a political cover-up. Is it too much to expect the same in regards to battlefield casualties living and dead? The Pentagon Papers and Watergate serve to demonstrate that the administration and DOD did not successfully control the message. The New York Times and the Washington Post were not successfully censored, nor were any others that chose not to be. Originally Posted by I B HankeringI was talking largely of the foreign press, which was my original point.
- Rudyard K
- 03-03-2011, 12:40 PM
while women talking gibberish most of the time and believe they are intellectuals do get away unquestioned ? Originally Posted by ninasastriThat's expected.
Not that i am CTs lapdog, but talking who belongs in discussion is not yours to choose. I think CT made a valid point. Originally Posted by ninasastriAnd it appears you skipped right over the fact that I said "I think he does know it was BS. And CT's valid point was?
- pjorourke
- 03-03-2011, 12:40 PM
No media is unbiased. It is human nature. PJ and CT kiss and make up. The ladies want to see it.
:vomit 2:
- Guest083011
- 03-03-2011, 12:45 PM
As the ladies say, "This is a business." I'm don't LFK or DFK w/o receiving the envelope first. I'm sure PJ is the same. No free or discounted sessions. Originally Posted by charlestudor2005
I hear you guys have no screening and do it for free. Perception is reality.
Edward and the squirrel watch too.Funny smilies PJ.
- charlestudor2005
- 03-03-2011, 01:21 PM
- I B Hankering
- 03-03-2011, 01:22 PM
Dispatches
Although I’ve recommended and argued that Michael Herr is an example of an unfettered U.S. war correspondent, it’s been thirty some years since I read his book. Presently, I cannot put my hands on my copy. What follows is another, Wendy Smith, reader’s endorsement of his book. Ms Smith includes samples of his prose.
NOTE: While in Vietnam, Herr pal’d around with the "English" (not American) photo journalist Tim Page (Page, BTW, was the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s character in Apocalypse Now).
“Liberated from deadlines by his freeform assignment from Esquire magazine, Herr spent much of his time hanging around with grunts like the exhausted kid who replied to the standard question, ‘How long you been in-country?’ by half-lifting his head and saying, very slowly, ‘all fuckin’ day,’ or the soldier detailed on reconnaissance patrol who told the reporter that the pills he took by the fistful ‘cooled things out just right’ and that ‘he could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope.’ Unlike his colleagues working for mainstream media, Herr was under no obligation to solicit and report the military command’s unwaveringly optimistic statements; instead, he listened to ‘grungy men in the jungle who talked bloody murder and killed people all the time,’ men who despised sugar-coated official platitudes about what they were doing there as much as the most committed antiwar activist did.”
“Herr dissected that complex, fraught relationship in a situation where the stakes were mortally high. He thought of himself as the grunts’ brother, sharing their miseries and dangers in the field. On the surface, they seemed to agree. They gave him their helmets and flak jackets, found him mattresses to sleep on, threw blankets over him when he was cold. ‘You’re all right man,’ they said, ‘you got balls.’
“But then would come ‘that bad, bad moment . . . the look that made you look away,’ or the comment of a rifleman watching a jeepload of correspondents drive off: ‘Those fucking guys, I hope they die.’ Then the distance was clear. ‘They weren’t judging me, they weren’t reproaching me, they didn’t even mind me, not in any personal way,’ Herr wrote. ‘They only hated me, hated me the way you’d hate any hopeless fool who would put himself through this thing when he had choices.’ He was not their brother, and he came to a conclusion many reporters prefer not to draw: ‘You were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did.’ There was only one way to honor that responsibility, and the grunts told him what it was. ‘They would ask you with an emotion whose intensity would shock you to please tell it, because they really did have the feeling that it wasn’t being told for them, that they were going through all this and that somehow no one back in the World knew about it.’
“Herr told as many of their stories as he could cram into a narrative burning with his fierce belief that ‘conventional journalism could no more reveal this war than conventional firepower could win it.’ He told the story of a freaked-out Marine, throwing away fatigues soaked with the blood of ‘some guy he didn’t even know [who] had been blown away right next to him, all over him.’ There was no way to wash them clean, the soldier said, near tears: ‘You could take and scrub them fatigues for a million years, and it would never happen.’ He told the story of a battalion in the midst of the Tet Offensive’s worst days, afflicted with despair so terrible that men from Graves Registration going through the personal effects of dead soldiers sometimes found letters from home ‘delivered days before and still unopened.’
“Over and over, Herr described major battles with massive casualties on both sides that didn’t so much end as stop when the North Vietnamese picked up most of their dead and vanished into the jungle. Command proclaimed them victories, but it was hard to feel victorious at the top of Dak To’s Hill 875, which hundreds of Americans had died to take, where there were exactly four Vietnamese bodies. ‘Of course more died, hundreds more,’ Herr wrote, ‘but the corpses kicked and counted and photographed and buried numbered four. . . . Spooky. Everything up there was spooky . . . you were there in a place where you didn’t belong.’
“There was a famous story, some reporters asked a door gunner [M60 machinegun], ‘How can you shoot women and children?’ and he answered, ‘It’s easy, you just don’t lead ‘em so much.’” – Michael Herr
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/war-weary/
Although I’ve recommended and argued that Michael Herr is an example of an unfettered U.S. war correspondent, it’s been thirty some years since I read his book. Presently, I cannot put my hands on my copy. What follows is another, Wendy Smith, reader’s endorsement of his book. Ms Smith includes samples of his prose.
NOTE: While in Vietnam, Herr pal’d around with the "English" (not American) photo journalist Tim Page (Page, BTW, was the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s character in Apocalypse Now).
“Liberated from deadlines by his freeform assignment from Esquire magazine, Herr spent much of his time hanging around with grunts like the exhausted kid who replied to the standard question, ‘How long you been in-country?’ by half-lifting his head and saying, very slowly, ‘all fuckin’ day,’ or the soldier detailed on reconnaissance patrol who told the reporter that the pills he took by the fistful ‘cooled things out just right’ and that ‘he could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a starlight scope.’ Unlike his colleagues working for mainstream media, Herr was under no obligation to solicit and report the military command’s unwaveringly optimistic statements; instead, he listened to ‘grungy men in the jungle who talked bloody murder and killed people all the time,’ men who despised sugar-coated official platitudes about what they were doing there as much as the most committed antiwar activist did.”
“Herr dissected that complex, fraught relationship in a situation where the stakes were mortally high. He thought of himself as the grunts’ brother, sharing their miseries and dangers in the field. On the surface, they seemed to agree. They gave him their helmets and flak jackets, found him mattresses to sleep on, threw blankets over him when he was cold. ‘You’re all right man,’ they said, ‘you got balls.’
“But then would come ‘that bad, bad moment . . . the look that made you look away,’ or the comment of a rifleman watching a jeepload of correspondents drive off: ‘Those fucking guys, I hope they die.’ Then the distance was clear. ‘They weren’t judging me, they weren’t reproaching me, they didn’t even mind me, not in any personal way,’ Herr wrote. ‘They only hated me, hated me the way you’d hate any hopeless fool who would put himself through this thing when he had choices.’ He was not their brother, and he came to a conclusion many reporters prefer not to draw: ‘You were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did.’ There was only one way to honor that responsibility, and the grunts told him what it was. ‘They would ask you with an emotion whose intensity would shock you to please tell it, because they really did have the feeling that it wasn’t being told for them, that they were going through all this and that somehow no one back in the World knew about it.’
“Herr told as many of their stories as he could cram into a narrative burning with his fierce belief that ‘conventional journalism could no more reveal this war than conventional firepower could win it.’ He told the story of a freaked-out Marine, throwing away fatigues soaked with the blood of ‘some guy he didn’t even know [who] had been blown away right next to him, all over him.’ There was no way to wash them clean, the soldier said, near tears: ‘You could take and scrub them fatigues for a million years, and it would never happen.’ He told the story of a battalion in the midst of the Tet Offensive’s worst days, afflicted with despair so terrible that men from Graves Registration going through the personal effects of dead soldiers sometimes found letters from home ‘delivered days before and still unopened.’
“Over and over, Herr described major battles with massive casualties on both sides that didn’t so much end as stop when the North Vietnamese picked up most of their dead and vanished into the jungle. Command proclaimed them victories, but it was hard to feel victorious at the top of Dak To’s Hill 875, which hundreds of Americans had died to take, where there were exactly four Vietnamese bodies. ‘Of course more died, hundreds more,’ Herr wrote, ‘but the corpses kicked and counted and photographed and buried numbered four. . . . Spooky. Everything up there was spooky . . . you were there in a place where you didn’t belong.’
“There was a famous story, some reporters asked a door gunner [M60 machinegun], ‘How can you shoot women and children?’ and he answered, ‘It’s easy, you just don’t lead ‘em so much.’” – Michael Herr
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/war-weary/
- Guest083011
- 03-03-2011, 02:15 PM
Isn't this prevented by bd. rules?Watching does not mean involvement. That of course means they would not run away dragging their perspective owners seeing you two pucker up (can ya picture a squirrel dragging Ans? Edward I can see pulling Becky and her car all at once "Super Dog!").Originally Posted by charlestudor2005
- charlestudor2005
- 03-03-2011, 02:28 PM
@IBH
OK, you sold me on one correspondent. The story you quoted smacks of a heart of darkness similar to Apocalypse Now.
But was his reporting picked up by the mainstream media and reported on the evening news? IDK.
OK, you sold me on one correspondent. The story you quoted smacks of a heart of darkness similar to Apocalypse Now.
But was his reporting picked up by the mainstream media and reported on the evening news? IDK.
- charlestudor2005
- 03-03-2011, 02:30 PM
Edward I can see pulling Becky and her car all at once "Super Dog!"). Originally Posted by SR OnlySo, does Edward need a cape instead of a tiara???
- Guest083011
- 03-03-2011, 02:48 PM
- NinaBrooke
- 03-03-2011, 04:10 PM
any way i think the real problem for the USA is pakistan. that is where i assume will be intervened next. The country is not stable, the only libertarian politician has been shot, al kaida everywhere , and they DO have weapons of mass destruction.
- WTF
- 03-04-2011, 05:32 AM
DispatchesWell the DOD controls it now!
Although I’ve recommended and argued that Michael Herr is an example of an unfettered U.S. war correspondent, it’s been thirty some years since I read his book. Presently, I cannot put my hands on my copy. What follows is another, Wendy Smith, reader’s endorsement of his book. Ms Smith includes samples of his prose.
NOTE: While in Vietnam, Herr pal’d around with the "English" (not American) photo journalist Tim Page (Page, BTW, was the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s character in Apocalypse Now).
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/war-weary/ Originally Posted by I B Hankering
You no longer have drafted members in the military. The military controls what is said by their employee's! They can not talk to reporters honestly without losing their job.
Look how they are treating the wiki leaks private. Reporters just carry the water for the military brass.
We have a viginia crew of reporters. I agree with charles premis.
.
That's expected.His valid point was that there are no valid points in this forum, just as you prove with every post. WTF is valid, Rudyard? You and you only?
And it appears you skipped right over the fact that I said "I think he does know it was BS. And CT's valid point was? Originally Posted by Rudyard K
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATPi3VQsEv0