How can you cover it if you don't understand it?
A number of people who read this site have commented both publicly and privately to me and other contributors that we focus a great deal on misrepresentations and mistakes made by the paid media in the reporting of CF affairs, especially the reports about our mission in Afghanistan. Too true: we do. There are a couple of reasons for that.
First, while we have our own sources of information that go beyond the mainstream media, we still rely on their reports for a sizeable portion of our information. The only way to circumvent that would be to go over and report first-hand ourselves from Kandahar, you can guess how likely it is that a simple blogger is going to be able to do that. So we watch and read the stories that journalists get paid to file, and pick them apart when we spot inaccuracies that are obvious to anyone familiar with the military, but wouldn't be obvious to the general public.
Second, whether we relied on the media for information or not, the fact is that the Canadian population at large most certainly does, and so we feel that we have a responsibility to correct the record as much as possible. Not everyone has the background to call bullshit when they see it in print or on the television screen. We have a little more expertise than your average Joe or Jane Canuck, and so we call BS on their behalf.
The real question this focus raises, though, is this: is the attention we're devoting to Canadian reporting unjustified? Well, not according to at least one member of the press, who expressed the following sentiments to us in private correspondence:
How does this affect coverage? Well, beyond the obvious problems associated with reporting by someone only qualified for and interested in 'deathwatch' duty, it also means that even the good reporters present a skewed picture of the mission.
For example, when Graeme Smith goes to speak with a couple of Taliban grunts in Pakistan, he's probably doing that on orders from Toronto. And when that story - which sports the headline "'The Canadians try to kill everybody'" - neglects to mention that the KAF battle group issued public warnings, including leafletting, before Op Medusa to warn civilians to get out of the area until the fighting was done, that's more likely an editorial decision than his own. And when nobody points out that a Taliban offensive that was crushed by Canadian troops - to the tune of 1500 fighters out of commission for good - is now being spun by the losers retroactively as a propaganda exercise...well, you get my point.
I'm as guilty as anyone of blaming the journalist whose name appears on the article, because as a blogger who has nobody but myself to answer to, I forget that the MSM is a multi-layered affair. A story can go off the rails anywhere from the idea and direction provided to the writer, to editorial decisions on what makes it to print and what doesn't. Many of those calls are made by someone other than the front-line reporter.
But regardless of precisely who is responsible for precisely what transgressions, and who should have blame apportioned to them in precisely what quantities, we simply won't let a flawed piece stand unchallenged. Informing the public on such weighty matters is too important - at least it is to us, if to nobody else.
First, while we have our own sources of information that go beyond the mainstream media, we still rely on their reports for a sizeable portion of our information. The only way to circumvent that would be to go over and report first-hand ourselves from Kandahar, you can guess how likely it is that a simple blogger is going to be able to do that. So we watch and read the stories that journalists get paid to file, and pick them apart when we spot inaccuracies that are obvious to anyone familiar with the military, but wouldn't be obvious to the general public.
Second, whether we relied on the media for information or not, the fact is that the Canadian population at large most certainly does, and so we feel that we have a responsibility to correct the record as much as possible. Not everyone has the background to call bullshit when they see it in print or on the television screen. We have a little more expertise than your average Joe or Jane Canuck, and so we call BS on their behalf.
The real question this focus raises, though, is this: is the attention we're devoting to Canadian reporting unjustified? Well, not according to at least one member of the press, who expressed the following sentiments to us in private correspondence:
The problem IMHO is that the decisions about such coverage are increasingly being made by editors in Toronto or Ottawa, for reasons wildly unconnected to what's been going on on the ground there for some time. [Media organization X], for example, insists on using Kandahar as a door prize assignment to hand out to...reporters regardless of their relevant experience (this in one of the most dangerous parts of the world). Many of them have never covered the military, let alone a complex counter-insurgency environment like that of southern Afghanistan, and as a result they mostly stay behind the wire doing "death watch."
Many of the experienced reporters...who might've had the perspective to do stories along the lines that [The Torch] so eloquently outlines, have been sidelined in favour of editors playing [organizational] politics. Personally, I'm so disgusted by the handling of the whole thing I'm not going back to KAF and I'm not the only one who feels this way. The CF's media strategy and the way they've handled the embedding process was and is far from perfect. But the lion's share of the blame for this distortion of the mission in Afghanistan can't be laid at their door.
How does this affect coverage? Well, beyond the obvious problems associated with reporting by someone only qualified for and interested in 'deathwatch' duty, it also means that even the good reporters present a skewed picture of the mission.
For example, when Graeme Smith goes to speak with a couple of Taliban grunts in Pakistan, he's probably doing that on orders from Toronto. And when that story - which sports the headline "'The Canadians try to kill everybody'" - neglects to mention that the KAF battle group issued public warnings, including leafletting, before Op Medusa to warn civilians to get out of the area until the fighting was done, that's more likely an editorial decision than his own. And when nobody points out that a Taliban offensive that was crushed by Canadian troops - to the tune of 1500 fighters out of commission for good - is now being spun by the losers retroactively as a propaganda exercise...well, you get my point.
I'm as guilty as anyone of blaming the journalist whose name appears on the article, because as a blogger who has nobody but myself to answer to, I forget that the MSM is a multi-layered affair. A story can go off the rails anywhere from the idea and direction provided to the writer, to editorial decisions on what makes it to print and what doesn't. Many of those calls are made by someone other than the front-line reporter.
But regardless of precisely who is responsible for precisely what transgressions, and who should have blame apportioned to them in precisely what quantities, we simply won't let a flawed piece stand unchallenged. Informing the public on such weighty matters is too important - at least it is to us, if to nobody else.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 3:42 p.m.
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