FOR THE FIRST WEEK or so after September 11, the American media’s coverage of the story was uniformly superb. It was, of course, inevitable that certain portions of the media would return to their usual obtuse navel-gazing. But the speed with which it happened is something to behold. The latest example is the much-derided musings of ABC News president David Westin on Oct. 23 at the Columbia School of Journalism. When asked if he thought the Pentagon was a “legitimate military target,” Westin replied: “It’s important I not have an opinion on that as I sit here in my [journalistic] capacity right now. . . . Our job is to determine what is, not what ought to be. . . . for me to take a position this was right or wrong? I mean, that’s perhaps for me in my private life . . . but as a journalist I feel strongly that’s something that I should not be taking a position on.” After the expected public outcry, Westin issued another statement backtracking from his earlier comments. Now Westin doesn’t have much in the way of journalistic credentials; ABC originally hired him as its general counsel because he was a well connected Beltway lawyer. But his remarks captured the prevailing view of war coverage among journalists–the ridiculous notion that they should be morally agnostic automatons, seeking some sort of Platonic ideal of “neutrality.” Not long after the terrorist attacks, ABC News banned its reporters from wearing American flag pins on the air, saying, “We cannot signal how we feel about a cause, even a justified and just cause.” Similarly, NBC’s Tom Brokaw recently told a student at Northwestern, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for a journalist to wear a flag. It suggests that you approve of whatever the government is doing at that time.” These comments reveal a profession incapable of elemental distinctions–for instance, between the nation which the flag represents, and the actions of its government–and so over-inflated with self-importance that it fears devastating effects if a single American journalist displays allegiance to his country. The neutrality craze manifests itself not only in symbolic matters like lapel pins, but also in more consequential decisions over how to cover military operations. Take the recent statement of NPR senior foreign editor Loren Jenkins. When asked whether NPR correspondents should report the whereabouts of an American special forces unit, even if the Pentagon said that doing so could put the troops’ lives in danger, Jenkins said, “The game of reporting is to smoke ’em out”: “You report it. . . . I don’t represent the government. I represent history, information, what happened.” This mindset suggests that perhaps we should just build a bunch of robot Christiane Amanpours and eliminate all the real journalists, with their inconvenient human allegiances–flimsy as those allegiances often prove to be. But not all good journalism involves merely factual reporting; sometimes, it also makes moral judgments. Journalists show no compunction doing this on issues close to their hearts, like, say, campaign finance reform. And the idea of journalistic “neutrality” is belied every day by the editorials disguised as “news analysis” that parade across the front pages of the country’s major newspapers. It should be simple to admit that the murder of 5,000 innocent people was wrong. So why, when America goes to war–even an eminently justified war–do our journalists become obsessed with neutrality? Why do they find it so difficult to consider themselves Americans first and journalists second? There are several plausible explanations. First, a reflexive anti-Americanism is common among the media elite. Second, reporters have always assumed–especially since Vietnam–that they must be wary of government deception during wartime. But the most likely explanation is that too many journalists are just vainglorious boobs, who imagine their lofty duties to “history, information, what happened” are too important to risk co-mingling with the simple patriotism of the multitudes. Still, somebody has to fight to protect our country’s liberties, including the sacred First Amendment right to report. Notwithstanding NPR’s Jenkins, most journalists understand that even their crushing responsibility to history shouldn’t jeopardize the lives and missions of fellow Americans serving in combat, right? Maybe not. Take the notorious comments from Mike Wallace of CBS’s “60 Minutes” and ABC’s Peter Jennings on “Under Orders, Under Fire,” which ran as part of a 1989 PBS series on “Ethics in America.” Wallace and Jennings were presented with a hypothetical scenario in which they were behind enemy lines covering an enemy unit that was preparing to ambush American troops. The moderator, Charles Ogletree, asked them if they would film the attack, or try to warn the Americans. At first, Jennings said that he “would do what I could to warn the Americans.” But Wallace disagreed, saying that “some other reporters . . . would regard it simply as another story that they are there to cover.” Following up on this, Ogletree pressed Wallace: “Don’t you have a higher duty as an American citizen to do all that you can to save the lives of soldiers rather than this journalistic ethic of reporting the facts?” To which Wallace replied, “No, you don’t have the higher duty to, no, no. You’re a reporter, your job is to cover what is going on in that war.” Jennings then changed his mind, saying, “I think he’s right, too. I’ve chickened out.” Is it any wonder why so many Americans detest journalists? In wartime, American journalists should see themselves as the equivalents of sportscasters on local TV and radio stations. When the late Harry Caray would call a Cubs game, there wasn’t any pretext that he was “neutral”; he was pulling for the Cubbies, and his comments during the games reflected that. But this understandable bias didn’t diminish his obligation to get the facts of the game right, or to criticize the Cubs when they did something nonsensical. Similarly, American journalists during wartime can accurately report on the conflict and maintain skepticism about government information and decision-making without needing to feign impartiality. As several other commentators have already noted, reporters today should take as their model the famous correspondents of World War II–such as Ernie Pyle or Edward R. Murrow–who reported accurately and retained a healthy skepticism toward government information, but harbored no vain pretension of concealing whose side they were on. Is that too much to ask of the prima donnas of contemporary American journalism? Lee Bockhorn is associate editor at The Weekly Standard.
