Monday, November 13, 2023

The military has done a vastly better 'job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have.

Convincing evidence has existed for a long time that many or most of mainstream media news reporting out of Gaza has actually been done by Hamas agents or Hamas sympathizers.  

As it relates to the most recent October 7th Invasion of Israel by Hamas, we have this sort of incriminating evidence.
OK.  Pretty bad.

But it gets worse.  Now there is evidence that the mainstream media local reporters had advance knowledge of the invasion and accompanied Hamas fighters during their attacks on civilians.  
Then there was the recent video of a mainstream media reporter apparently riding a motorcycle with Hamas terrorists and holding a grenade during the attack.
Perhaps some or all of these will end up being propaganda.  But it is certainly consistent with past incidents.

And while these revelations spill out, I am reminded of an incident which happened sometime just before I attended college.  Well, no.  As I go to find the details, I see it was actually in the late 1980s but it was a show which I discussed with various friends and had significant impact shaping my thoughts.  The show was on PBS, "Ethics in America" and in this instance was a roundtable discussion of military ethics.  While most of the participants were military men, pundits, or politicians, two journalists, Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace took part as well.  

Double click to enlarge.

At some point in the moderated discussion, a particular hypothetical scenario was raised.  James Fallows had a good account of it.  

Peter Jennings of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CBS. Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Vietnamese government. After much pleading, the North Vietnamese had agreed to let Jennings and his news crew into their country, to film behind the lines and even travel with military units. Would Jennings be willing to go? 

Of course, Jennings replied. Any reporter would - and in real wars reporters from his network often had. But while Jennings and his crew are traveling with a North Vietnamese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by American and South Vietnamese troops, they unexpectedly cross the trail of a small group of American and South Vietnamese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one. What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks. Would he tell his cameramen to "Roll tape!" as the North Vietnamese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Vietnamese prepare to ambush the Americans? 

Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds after Ogletree asked this question. "Well, I guess I wouldn't," he finally said. "I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Vietnamese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans." 

Even if it means losing the story? Ogletree asked.

Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. "But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act. That's purely personal, and other reporters might have a different reaction." 

Immediately Mike Wallace spoke up. "I think some other reporters would have a different reaction," he said, obviously referring to himself. "They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover." 

"I am astonished, really," at Jennings's answer, Wallace said a moment later. He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: "You're a reporter. Granted you're an American" - at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. "I'm a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you're an American, you would not have covered that story." 

Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn't Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? "No," Wallace said flatly and immediately. "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!" 

Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said. "I chickened out." Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached. As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, everyone else in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror. 

Retired Air Force general Brent Scowcroft, who had been Gerald Ford's national security advisor and would soon serve in the same job for George Bush, said it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. "What's it worth?" he asked Wallace bitterly. "It's worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon." Ogletree turned to Wallace. What about that? Shouldn't the reporter have said something? Wallace gave his most disarming grin, shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms wide in a "Don't ask me!" gesture, and said, "I don't know." 

He was mugging to the crowd in such a way that he got a big laugh - the first such moment of the discussion. Wallace paused to enjoy the crowd's reaction. Jennings, however, was all business, and was still concerned about the first answer he had given. "I wish I had made another decision," Jennings said, as if asking permission to live the last five minutes over again. "I would like to have made his decision" - that is, Wallace's decision to keep on filming. 

A few minutes later Ogletree turned to George M. Connell, a Marine colonel in full uniform, jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell looked at the TV stars and said, "I feel utter . . . contempt. " Two days after this hypothetical episode, Connell, Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces--and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. The instant that happened he said, they wouldn't be "just journalists" any more. Then they would drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield. "We'll do it!" Connell said. "And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get ... a couple of journalists." 

The last few words dripped with disgust. Not even Ogletree knew what to say. There was dead silence for several seconds. Then a square-jawed man with neat gray hair and aviator glasses spoke up. It was Newt Gingrich, looking a generation younger and trimmer than when he became Speaker of the House in I995. One thing was clear from this exercise, he said: "The military has done a vastly better 'job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have." That was about the mildest way to put it. 

I remember being very engaged with this roundtable and this particular exchange at that time.  Of course, at a rhetorical level, Wallace's answer is understandable and to some degree sustainable.  However, it is a glib sophomoric unserious answer to a profound question and Wallace is answering glibly, not profoundly.  Jennings at least attempts to answer the profound question.  He throws away his credibility though, by retreating from his first, honest, answer as soon as he is challenged by Wallace.

But the viewer, at least this one, was still stuck with the smirking glibness of Wallace, making a horrific declaration with full expectation that he was winning points, ethical, professional or otherwise.

Ogletree's question is even more interesting because there is an unacknowledged further layer.  If the journalist were to alert the Americans and they were able to ambush the North Vietnamese instead and wiped them out, would that make a difference in the answer?  There are all sorts of interesting permutations that warrant discussion with plenty of time, good fellowship and sufficient refreshments.

Ogletree's question was ultimately quite profound.  Where does one's loyalty lie?  With fellow Americans?  With fellow human beings?  With one's contract with the North Vietnamese, enemy of one's country?  With one's readers?  With perceived duty to one's profession?  Wallace managed to give the only answer which was almost certainly wrong on most counts.  And he did so glibly, smugly, and with the giggles of a five-year-old who knows he has done something naughty but thinks he can charm his way out of it.  

It can't have been the first time for me but it was perhaps one of the clearest times when I could see a journalist wanting the acknowledgement and glamor of professionalism while thinking and behaving with such deep unseriousness.  Wallace was the very picture of shallow unreliability.  

It was perhaps one of the most memorable points in my evolution from deep respect for the potential of the journalistic profession to a deep contempt for journalism as it is really practiced.

And here we are some forty years later and apparently journalists and mainstream media have still not, as Gingrich observed, done much systematic thinking through of the ethics of the behavior of journalists.  

In Gaza, for a decade or more, they have been comfortable with using Hamas stringers to report inaccurately and misleadingly on major stories.  Now it appears that those same journalists may even have been involved in perpetrating war crimes.  And just like Wallace, the mainstream media pundits are so far perfectly happy to defend the indefensible.  

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