The 11th Day

March 30, 2003

Eleven days into Operation Iraqi Freedom, the electronic media is beginning to distinguish itself.  We can listen to the hysterical ravings of Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith of Fox television news or the anti-war bias of NBC television news, the Notorious Baath Channel.

We start with the March 26th broadcast of  "Dateline."

The program lead was a report of unconfirmed civilian deaths in the Iraq War.  NBC ignored the top news story of the day which was the unconfirmed report that Iraq had executed American prisoners of war.  Why was the enemy's report the favored news item?

Then, broadcaster of false history, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, referenced Baghdad as becoming another World War II Stalingrad.  What utter nonsense.  Though Brokaw claims to have some understanding of World War II -- he allegedly wrote a book about the generation that fought the war -- his reference was an idiot's attempt to make an issue where none existed.  For the record, German supply lines to Stalingrad were well over a thousand miles, not hundreds as in Iraq. The Russian army had an armor force many times larger than the Germans.  The Stalingrad siege was conducted during the winter.  Brokaw's comparison was inaccurate, biased, and inflammatory.

Dateline spent more time giving us video of Iraq personnel than of coalition troops.  Two of its reporters made bald-faced assumptions about a Pentagon war plan of which they have no knowledge nor understanding.

Locally, the NBC affiliate in Las Vegas, KVBC-TV, did not have the good sense to dump the network show even though this broadcast station airs commercials in support of the war.

Today, NBC released a statement of where it stands on the Iraq war.  There is no longer a need to speculate or draw conclusions from its broadcasts.  The statement concerned the actions of one of its reporters, Peter Arnett, on assignment in Baghdad.

Peter Arnett, employed by NBC news and National Geographic Explorer, in a self-aggrandizing interview with Iraqi TV broadcast March 30, stated that "Now America is reappraising the battlefield, delaying the war maybe a week and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan."

Arnett's interview was a colossal blunder.  Instead of being a gatherer of facts, Arnett offered an editorial opinion.  Arnett demonstrated an insolence to objective standards of journalism.

NBC, as part of its plan to narrowcast, i.e., be the anti-war news provider, said in a statement joined by its cable outlet MSNBC and National Geographic Explorer that Arnett's "impromptu interview with Iraqi television was done as a professional courtesy and was similar to other interviews he has done with media outlets from around the world."  It also added, "His outstanding reporting of the war speaks for itself."

Let us just ignore NBC News.