What Journalists Can Teach Us

Molly Bingham's report on her 10 months in Iraq, "understanding who the people are who are fighting, why they fight, what their fundamental beliefs are, when they started, what kinds of backgrounds they come from, what education, jobs they have." And so forth.

Lesson 1: Journalists are inculcated with moral relativism, as is illustrated by the following quotation:

And many American journalists often refer to those attacking Americans or Iraqi troops and policemen as "terrorists." Some are indeed using terrorist tactics, but calling them "terrorists" simply shuts down any sense of need or interest to look beyond that word, to understand why indeed human beings might be willing to die in a violent struggle to achieve their goal. Pushing them off as simply "insane, wild Arabs" or "extremist Muslims" does them no service, but even more, it does the U.S. no service. If we as Americans fail to understand who attacks us and why, we will simply continue on this same path, and continue watching from afar as a war we don't understand boils over.

Lesson 2: The only skepticism they have is toward America. Some of them are perfectly willing to set aside any loyalties they may have developed growing up in this country in order to gain the confidence of our enemies, i.e. terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to murder them on videotape at the slightest suspicion.

Lesson 3: Journalists, like terrorists, are sanctimonious, drawing huge satisfaction from behavior that most people would consider suicidal, pointless or treasonous, such as gaining the trust of a gang of Muslim radicals in order to get "the story" which few, if any, of their readers really care to know, or couldn't read on terrorist websites.

Lesson 4: Certain reporters would risk their lives rather than take our military's word for anything.

Lesson 5: Such journalists would refuse to advise our military of information they might acquire which could save the lives of American troops and Iraqi non-combatants in order to get "the story," and would take umbrage if anyone were to question this behavior.

Lesson 6: The same journalists consider themselves heroic for behaving this way, and view their audience, the American people, as jingoistic and arrogant for not being more curious about "the resistance" in Iraq, that is, those who set IEDs beside roads, send suicide bombers and truck bombs into areas crowded with religious worshippers and volunteers for national service and take non-Arabs hostage and murdering them on camera.

Lesson 7: Reporters such as this view dictatorship by religious radicals or madmen like Saddam as legitimate forms of government that are equally valid to democracy and American ideas of freedom and human rights. The only exception is that nothing trumps Freedom of the Press. If they presented themselves as hostages to "the resistance," they would be scandalized if America failed to submit to the demands of their captors.

Lesson 8: "The story" such journalists return with frequently has little or no news value, since it usually serves to dramatize the dedication of the reporter, while telling the rest of us little that we didn't already know or couldn't surmise about "the resistance."