Did anybody catch this? Does it need to be de-bunked? If so, I am offering it here as a sacrificial article. Debunk or comment as serves: THE BUILDINGS THAT ARE NOT BURNING ""They have a saying in the news business," Geraldo Rivera related this week. "Reporters don't report buildings that don't burn." And with that introduction, he told a TV audience about the story that is being systematically denied to our entire nation: the success story of post-Saddam Iraq. Are we losing some soldiers each week? Yes. Is there some frustration in the public about electricity and water service? Yes. Are some Saddam Hussein loyalists throughout the land, making trouble? Yes. Has this opened a windo w for some terrorist mischief? Yes. But that's ALL we hear. No wonder the country is in a mixed mood about Iraq. If you hear about the buildings that are not burning, though, it is a different story indeed. Rivera is no shill for George W. Bush. But Bush, Condi Rice and Colin Powell together could not have been as effective as Geraldo was Thursday night on the Fox News Channel's Hannity and Colmes program. "When I got to Baghdad, I barely recognized it," he began, comparing his just-completed trip to two others he made during and just after the battle to topple Saddam. "You have over 30,000 Iraqi cops and militiamen already on the job. This is four months after major fighting stopped. Can you imagine that kind of gearing up in this country? Law and order is better; archaeological sites are being preserved; factories, schools are being guarded." But what about the secondhand griping that the media have been so efficiently relating about power, water and other infrastructure? "To say that Iraq is being rebuilt is not true," answered Rivera. "Iraq is being built. There was no infrastructure before; we are doing it. I just think the good news is being underestimated and under reported." At this juncture, one must evaluate how to feel about the voices telling us only about the bad news in Iraq, whether from the mouths of news anchors or Democratic presidential hopefuls. At best, they are under- informed. At worst, their one-sided assessments of post-Saddam Iraq are intentional falsehoods for obvious reasons. If I hear one more person mock that "Mission Accomplished" banner beneath which President Bush thanked a shipload of sailors and Marines a few months back, I'm going to spit. That was a reference to the ouster of Saddam's regime, and that mission was indeed accomplished, apparently to the great chagrin of the American left. No one said what followed would be easy or cheap, and that's why the dripping-water torture of the cost and casualty stories is so infuriating. Remember we pay our soldiers whether they are in Iraq or in Ft Bragg, North Carolina. We should all mourn the loss of every fallen soldier. But context cries out to be heard. Our present news media is not performing this task. As some dare to wonder if this might become a Vietnam-like quagmire, I'll remind whoever needs it that most of our 58,000 Vietnam war toll died between 1966 and 1972, during which we lost an average of about 8,000 per year. That's about 22 per day, every day, for thousands of days on end. Let us hear NO MORE Vietnam comparisons. They do not equate. What I hope to hear is more truth, even if we have to wrench it from the mouths of the media and political hacks predisposed to bash the remarkable job we are doing every day in what was not so long ago a totalitarian wasteland. Local elections are under way across Iraq, Rivera reported. "Where Kurds and Arabs have been battling for decades, things have been settling down. Administrator Paul Bremer is doing a great job." So does Geraldo think his media colleagues are intentionally painting with one side of the brush? "I'm not into conspiracy theories, ... but there's just more bang for your buck when you report the GI who got killed rather than the 99 who didn't get killed; who make friends, who helped schedule elections; who helped shops get open for business; who helped traffic flow again. "The vast majority of Iraqis are very happy to have us there. I would like to see a bit more balance." This needs to be reported to the American Public who are presently being duped. I expect the dominant media culture to nitpick and attack Bush, and Democrats to blast him with reckless abandon. But when that leads to the willful exclusion of facts that would shine truthful light on the great work of the American armed forces, that level of malice plumbs new depths."
Isn't this kind of like saying you are ok even though one of your organs is cancerous. Sure, your lungs are being eaten alive, but what about your fingers and toes, they are all well manicured.
After looking at media from around the world and following Geraldo's reasoning, apparently the traitors in the US are duping the media around the world and are apparently most successful overseas, whereas they can't seem to do a thing in their home turf. Yes, that is a logical argument.
Geraldo has a fair point. But he is a hypocrite as well. It always amazes me when the left attempts to paint the right black and vice versa. To me it is just moronic and repulsive. Hello Geraldo, this is politics so deal with it. Seeing republican talk heads look like Hannity, Geraldo and Tucker Carson cry and whine on TV over what they percieve as unfair attacks at the president it just makes me laugh and roll my eyes. The hypocritic republican party (who I coincedentally have a lot in common with) would do the exact same thing and then some if they were in the left's position. STOP WHINING!!!
Isn't it more substantial than "whining" to criticize members of a profession who are not living up to a professional standard? BTW, since when has Geraldo been a Republican talking head?
You're holding Geraldo up as someone who could tell reporters a thing or two about professional standards? Wow! Hey, I agree with him that there is no Vietnam comparison to be made. And I also think the media coverage is a mixed bag, to be generous, but you do realize that he works for Fox, right? With the constant depletion of journalistic integrity on display everywhere on the tube, the radio, newspapers and the other outlets, I wouldn't put much faith in Geraldo's interpretation of the quality of our local city council, much less the invasion and occupation of Iraq. There is some excellent reporting being done today and excellent investigative work as well, but this isn't the quality of news reporting I grew up watching, reading and listening to. I suspect you might agree on that score, giddyup.
Sort of like the New York Times parroting the Bushies call for war *and* using the same six Chalabi guys from Iraq to triumphantly push forth unsubstantiated finds of WMD repeatedly in the days before and after the fall of Baghdad. They have yet to issue a mea culpa. Heck, even that O'Reilly guy did something close to that and he's not even a reporter.
Or how about the way the National Review and the Weekly Standard skewered Hans Blix and Scott Ritter, who it turns out, got it right after all. Where's the mea culpas from them?
M-A-R-V-I-N---Z-I-N-D-L-E-R.... E-Y-E-W-I-T-N-E-S-S---N-E-W-S... Geraldo is something of a product of his times, but his early work was award-winning was it not? Some of the "Mea Culpas" that you guys want to rack up are still premature and, anyway, a "Mea Culpa" about leadership decisions based on intelligence in no way compares to an even-handed treatment of American news coming out of a war zone where Americans are at risk.
Geraldo is to journalistic integrity as Jerry Springer is to jounalistic integrity. It's like a clown on the all-clowns-all-the-time channel. I didn't even read what he said but why do we even care? The guy should work for the WWE as a color analyst.
Man, I thought "my side" was supposed to be the judgemental, hard-hearted, unforgiving ones. Geraldo is an experienced journalist. He was one of the embedded journalists. Yes, he has had his forays into zaniness but that alone doesn't disqualify his argument. We have heard this criticism of his from others, however his chiming in like this is a bit unexpected.
Rimbaud what are you trying to show with the snopes reference. The obvious that tories aren't written about building that don't burn?, Geraldo's lack of journalistic ethics?
Not to attempt to debunk this article because it really doesn't matter to me. But Geraldo is an embarrasment. He has absolutely nothing to do with real journalism. He injects himself into every story he reports, which is the opposite of good reporting. He is a joke.
I have nothing to do with journalism either-- except as a consumer. I have chimed in with many of these same criticisms heard from other "unpopular" sources. Do neither Geraldo nor I have a legitimate complaint?
What everybody has overlooked is that this article was written in August 2003. The insurgency started to get bad in November, and the Shia/Sunni Rebellion didn't start till this month. It has almost no relevance given the current climate, which everybody agrees has changed dramatically in the last 6 months.
Exactly Sam, the bad news coming out of Iraq is very recent, at about the same time the "Grisly Day in Iraq" thread was started, which was about a month ago.
Yes, but you aren't getting paid by a network to legitimize your opinions and pass it off as news. Geraldo was one of the first people on TV to suggest that his opinion of the story at hand was "reporting." It is one of the biggest problems with have with news today. News is NOT opinion. It is the delievery of the facts at hand. If he wants to have his opinion heard, fine. He has a right to do so on talk shows, through books and op ed pieces. But, the minute he attempts to pass his own opinion off as a legitimate source of news, he ceases becoming a journalist and becomes John Stossel.
This implies even more that the reports that things were going badly were even more exagerated since those were relatively quiet times. Would that be true too?
What reports?? Seriously, I don't even remember what was being reported in August further making this editorial irrelevant today.
