Afstan: Most recent Canadian deaths: "For shame"/Update: Our media and "hoo-hah"

Further to this (now unwieldly) post,

Most recent Canadian deaths: A CF "cover up" at Kandahar?/Uppestdate: Matthew Fisher of Canwest News adds to the story

one will let BruceR. have the last word at Flit:

A certain popular blogger (who I've mentioned before but shall not link to now or hereafter) recently put on his website details relating to a recent IED strike of:

*number of total casualties (including wounded);
*details of the damage to an ISAF vehicle produced by a certain quantity of explosive;
*precise details of the limitations of counter-measures employed by that vehicle; and
*the ISAF name for the route where it occurred.

In the same post, that blogger urged Canadian media to publicize the same info and claimed the Canadian government was trying to cover up its own incompetence by citing the security of the troops in asking other media not to reprint it. "There is nothing classified or sensitive about the information supplied..." he yawped. For the record, he's wrong, on all four counts above...

Read on.

Update: I was, er, economical with my truth. More words in an overview of all this hoo-hah by Terry Glavin, with some interesting points on how different countries deal with their military dead (hint: Canada is rather open):

One Damn Yankee Who Should Take A Good Long Walk Off A Short Pier.
...
When I was in Kandahar recently, I was gently but firmly instructed against describing in any great detail or taking photographs of the insides of those weirdly-named "Light Armoured Vehicles" where so many of our people have died. Is the public ill-served by this minor fact-reporting bother? I hardly think so.

It's quite right and proper that journalists report the facts and tell the truth about what our soldiers do in Afghanistan, without any regard whatsoever to the degree that their work might cause pants-wetting among the military brass or its legion of public-affairs officers. But the purpose of journalism is not to endanger the lives of the men and women who guard us while we sleep, or to disrespect those who die while doing so.

As for operation-security quarrels journalists might have with the Canadian Forces, they can be settled in two ways. We resolve them quietly and by civil conversation and adjudication, now, or we set them aside entirely, and revisit them later, when we bloody well win [emphasis added, something about which our media seem not to care a whit, pity when it's fine not to give a good god-damned hoot if the bad guys win--journalistic ethics, standards, attitudes, whatever aside; there is a remaining morality, or should be].

This is war. Get used to it.

The preceding link is to a superb post of Babbling's here about how the Canadian media cover (or rather fail to) things military. The post concludes:

...
This is the underlying issue with all military matters in Canada - political, funding, journalistic, the whole ball of wax: if ordinary Canadians cared more about it - cared enough to vote one way or another in the next election on it, cared enough to write in and complain about shoddy coverage, to cancel their subscription or change the channel over it - the politicians and journalists would quickly take note and change their behaviour accordingly.

At the end of the day, the Canadian Forces gets the attention and resources that we, the Canadian people, demand for it. So while the Canadian media needs to take a long-overdue look in the mirror over how they cover the CF, the Canadian public should do a bit of soul-searching too.

Quite.