Why We Hate the Media

[Sanguine]

A really good read.

by James Fallows

Chapter I Why We Hate the Media

(Reprinted with permission by the author and Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Copyright © 1996. All rights reserved.)

Why, exactly, has the media establishment become so unpopular with so many people? Here are just a few examples of what provokes American anger. They suggest that the public has good reason to think that the news media are not doing their job.

Washing Their Hands of Responsibility: "North Kosan"

In the late 1980s, public television stations aired a talking head series called Ethics in America. For each show, more than a dozen prominent thinkers sat around a horseshoe-shaped table and tried to answer troubling ethical questions posed by a moderator.

From the respectability of the panelists to the super-seriousness of the topics, the series might have seemed a good bet to be paralyzingly dull. But the drama and tension of at least one show made that episode absolutely riveting.

This episode was sponsored by Montclair State College in the fall of 1987. Its title was "Under Orders, Under Fire," and most of the panelists were former soldiers talking about the ethical dilemmas of their work. The moderator was Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School, who moved from expert to expert asking increasingly difficult questions in the law school's famous Socratic style. During the first half of the show Ogletree made the soldiers squirm about ethical tangles on the battlefield. The man getting the roughest treatment was Frederick Downs, a novelist who as a young Army lieutenant in Vietnam had lost his left arm when a mine blew up. Ogletree asked Downs to imagine that he was a young lieutenant again. He and his platoon were in the nation of "South Kosan," advising South Kosanese troops in their struggle against invaders from "North Kosan." (This scenario was apparently a hybrid of the U.S. role in the wars in Korea and Vietnam.) A North Kosanese unit had captured several of Downs's men alive-but Downs had captured one of the North Kosanese. Downs did not know where his men were being held, but his prisoner did. And so Ogletree put the question: How far will Downs go to make the prisoner talk? Will he order him tortured? Will he torture the prisoner himself Suppose Downs has a big knife -in his hand. Where will he start cutting the prisoner? When will he make himself stop, if the prisoner just won't talk? Downs did not shrink from the questions. He wouldn't enjoy it, he told Ogletree. He would have to live with the consequences for the rest of his life. But, yes, he would torture the captive. He would use the knife. He would do the cutting himself. He would listen to the captive scream. He would do whatever was necessary to try to save his own men. While explaining his decisions Downs sometimes gestured with his left hand for emphasis, except that the hand was a metal hook. Ogletree worked his way through the other military officials, asking all how they reacted to Frederick Downs's choice. Retired general William Westmoreland, who had commanded the whole American force in Vietnam when Downs was serving there, deplored Downs's decision. After all, he said, even war has its rules. An Army chaplain wrestled with what he'd do if Downs came to him privately and confessed what he had done. A Marine Corps officer juggled a related question, of what he'd do if he came across an American soldier who, like Downs in the hypothetical case, was about to torture or execute a bound and unarmed prisoner. The soldiers disagreed among themselves. Yet in describing their decisions, every one of them used phrases like "I hope I would have the courage to . . ." or "In order to live with myself later I would . . ." The whole exercise may have been set up as a rhetorical game, but Ogletree's questions clearly tapped into serious discussions the soldiers had already had about the consequences of choices they made. Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening's panel, better known than William Westmoreland himself. These were two star TV journalists: Peter Jennings of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace of 6o 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 Kosanese government. After much pleading, the North Kosanese 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 Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by American and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly cross the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese 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 Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese 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 Kosanese 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....

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/press/vanities/fallows.html