The Newsweek scandal brings media bias into sharper focus

Saith today’s Best of the Web Today, regarding the Newsweek scandal:

Glenn Reynolds gets it right:

If [Newsweek] had wrongly reported the race of a criminal and produced a lynching, they’d feel much worse-which is why they generally don’t report such things, a degree of sensitivity they don’t extend to reporting on, you know, minor topics like wars. . . . People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because-let’s be clear here-Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.

Journalists have to make myriad judgment calls, and this is far from the first time a news organization has jumped the gun and reported information that turned out to be false-though usually the consequences aren’t so bloody. But it’s fair to say this is an example of “adversary” journalism getting out of control. Reporters are not agents of the government, but it wouldn’t hurt if, at least during wartime, they were restrained by some sense of patriotism.

As I said, insitutionally, Newsweek wanted to believe the story that American interrogators had flushed the Quran down a toilet.

I’ve been saying it now for at least a year: it is too much to expect that media organizations and their coverage will be unbiased. It’s not even really possible, anyway.

No, as I have pointed out over and over, the real question facing Newsweek and all other media, including bloggers, is which biases shall they/we adopt, and why?

Media managers need to ponder very deeply one over-arching question when considering how to cover stories related to the war on terrorism:

One way or another, what you print or broadcast, what stories you cover and how you cover them, what attention you pay to what issues and how you describe them - all these things mean that you will support one outcome over another. Which will you choose? How will you support it? These are the most important questions of your vocation today. But you are not facing them at all.

Roger Simon is right: this war is war at its most basic: “It’s about civilization versus a death cult. Make a choice!”

Arthhur Chrenkoff, born and raised in communist Poland, enjoyed the Star Wars movies when they were shown there. But he writes George Lucas to confess he and other oppressed peoples apparently misunderstood what Lucas was trying to say. So Arthur volunteers to cross over to the Dark Side.

Read the whole thing. Really.

Der Spiegel interviewed British historian Frederick Taylor, whose latest book argued that the destruction of the ancient city of Dresden by British and American bombers in February 1945 was not the unjustified slaughter it is now mostly said to be. Slaughter it was indeed, but Taylor says, “Dresden had war industries and was a major transportation hub.” That doesn’t mean he thinks the bombing was altogether justified, though.

The bombing of Dresden began at night by the Royal Air Force and was continued by day by the 8th US Air Force. It was one of the the most lethal bombing raids against any German city. The air raid was the brain child of British Air Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris.

In 1945, Arthur Harris decided to create a firestorm in the medieval city of Dresden. He considered it a good target as it had not been attacked during the war and was virtually undefended by anti-aircraft guns. The population of the city was now far greater than the normal 650,000 due to the large numbers of refugees fleeing from the advancing Red Army.

On the 13th February 1945, 773 Avro Lancasters bombed Dresden. During the next two days the USAAF sent over 527 heavy bombers to follow up the RAF attack. Dresden was nearly totally destroyed. As a result of the firestorm it was afterwards impossible to count the number of victims. Recent research suggest that 35,000 were killed but some German sources have argued that it was over 100,000.

Controversy still obviously swirls concerning the destruction of most of the city, one of the oldest and most architecturally unique in Europe. One aim of the bombing was to destroy hubs of lines of communication - roads and rail lines - that converged on the city. This would hinder the ability of the Germans to defend against the advancing Soviet army advancing from the east. But an internal RAF memo also said explicitly in January 1945 that the destruction of the city would “show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.” After all, as 1945 opened it was clear to all the allied powers that victory was certain; the British much more than the Americans were already pondering the postwar balance of power with the Soviets.

After the war, Air Marshal Harris said,

I know that the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that our earlier attacks were as fully justified as any other operation of war. Here I will only say that the attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by much more important people than myself… .

These excerpts from this British site, which has more.

One of the less-examined aspects of Allied strategic aims against both the Germans and the Japanese is the the destruction of enormous numbers of civilians and urban areas was a deliberate, planned war aim. I covered this topic in 2002, but here is a pertinent excerpt that follows my explanation of the American myth of “precision bombing:”

The Americans rejected terror bombing, but not for long. As the war went on and on, and German and Japanese resistance failed to slacken, President Roosevelt decided that the German and Japanese peoples must realize after the war that not only had their armed forces been defeated: the entire nation, as a nation, had been beaten. He and Churchill were well aware that German militarism had survived World War I because its apologists had successfully propagated the myth that the Kaiser’s army had not really been defeated, it had been “stabbed in the back” by disloyal factions at home.

Hence, said, Roosevelt,

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation. . . . The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

(Roosevelt’s policy seems not far from Civil War Gen. William T. Sherman’s observation of the Confederate States, “War, and war alone, can inspire our enemy with respect, and they will have their belly full of that very soon.”)

So, according to historian Richard B. Frank in his award-winning book, Downfall, the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire:

Viewed in this light, massive urban bombing complemented the aim of unconditional surrender. It was not just a handful of vile men who flaunted vile ideologies; whole populations imbibed these beliefs and acted as willing acolytes. Unconditional surrender and vast physical destruction would sear the price of aggression into the minds of the German and Japanese peoples. No soil would be left from which myths might later sprout that Germany and Japan had not really been defeated. These policies would assure that there would be no third world war with Germany, nor would Japan get a second opportunity.

One notes that Japan and Germany have been well behaved since 1945. But we also have to note that massive, destructive bombing was alone not the reason. It was simply impossible for either country’s armed forces to claim that they had prevailed, or at least held their own, on the field of battle. German and Japanese orphans, widows and grieving parents were in almost every other household, and a lie that their armed forces had not really lost could not possibly have found legs to stand on.

No doubt the controversies over the conduct of the war will continue. Historian Taylor gets the last word here, responding to a question of whether Dresden was the “Holocaust” of Allied bombings.

Half a million Soviet citizens, for example, died from German bombing during the invasion and occupation of Russia. That’s roughly equivalent to the number of German citizens who died from Allied raids. But the Allied bombing campaign was attached to military operations and ceased as soon as military operations ceased. But the Holocaust and the murder of all those millions would not have ceased if the Germans had won the war. Bombing is ruthless war making, but to use the word Holocaust to describe ruthless war making is to confuse two entirely different things.

Bill Roggio has covered the al Qaeda problem in Iraq very thoroughly. The top posts as I write this concern the Newsweek scandal, but keep paging down to find all kinds of good stuff, including a report that the terrorists were fighting each other in Qaim.

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Brian J. Dunn wonders,

While much of the talk of network centric warfare is about how we will see and fight the enemy; I’m a little concerned about how we will deal with all the information that shows that war is actually a brutal and ugly business-even for the good guys. How will we protect our troops after the fighting ends when everything they do is recorded?

Good question.

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Steve at WordUnheard has some history and observations about ideology at PBS.

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James Dunnigan says that the Marines have equipped their M-16s with a “Super Sight” that enables first-round hits at 300 meters or farther.

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Not too many weeks ago Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen was being touted as a potential 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. And now - well, maybe not. Bill Hobbs sheds some light.

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Good fences do indeed make good neighbors - ot at least keep the lousy neighbors away!

Some bona fide journalists who also happen to blog are nuking Newsweek for its massive error in facts concerning its story that American interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed the Quran down the toilet to get Muslim detainees to talk. The story was false, but when it spread to Afghanistan, it sparked widespread rioting that killed 15 people.

I won’t try to play catch-up with the rest of the ’sphere, so I urge you to read Austin Bay’s devastating analysis and also Joe Gandelman’s. Both are journalists in the tradition sense. Lots of links at Michelle Malkin’s site. Belmont Club has a lot to say.

Any way you cut it, Newsweak displayed a reckless disregard for the truth - but institutionally, they wanted to believe the report.

But remember - journalists are “accountable,” aren’t they?

Update: Now Newsweak has definitively retracted the story.

Doug Payton says that, “The “Newsweek” article debacle has put the Left in the rather strange position of defending irresponsible journalism that gets people killed.”

Chuck Simmins ties together the Newsweek debacle to the Spanish American War, Watergate and Valerie Plame. Whew!