Journalists, Government Officials Should Read More, Watch More TV
August 20, 2004

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

I usually listen to the 8 a.m. radio news over morning coffee, which on the station my clock is set offers a 10-minute summary, half national news from CBS, half local.

I was doing so as usual a couple of days ago when a particular CBS story caught my attention. The announcer reported that the older, targeted al Qaeda leadership who had fallen in the “War on Terrorism” were being replaced by younger terrorists who were being moved up to fill the upper ranks. A key element of this story was that this was “bad news for the Bush Administration.”

That spin got my immediate attention and I was alert to the explanation. According to CBS, this was bad news for Bush because he had claimed that we had been successful in capturing, killing or isolating the al Qaeda capos.

I probably didn’t hear the rest of the news program, because that bit got me thinking about media spinning by superficial journalists, dysfunctional government employees, national politics and the 2004 presidential election in particular.

Bear in mind that this story followed close on the heels of the White House announcement that Bush had nominated Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) to be the new head of the CIA, and two other stories that had given unnamed government bureaucrats and journalists the vapors.

(The vapors in this case are a reference to a mysterious ailment that afflicted Victorian ladies when they were shocked by some unwelcome news.)

The new stories came hard on the heels of the government’s revelation that intelligence pointed toward al Qaeda picking financial centers in New York City, Newark, NJ, and Washington, DC, as targets for future “imminent” attacks.

In one of the newer stories it was reported that al Qaeda operatives had been considering takeover of passenger helicopters in New York City to be used as weapons of mass destruction.

In the other it was revealed that al Qaeda agents had been videotaping potential high-profile targets in Las Vegas for other acts of terrorism.

Rattling the Newsrooms
These latest reports of possible new threats seemed to rattle newsrooms around the country yet again, which then incited journalists to immediately incite more public hysteria and then use it to flay the current Administration. Helping them are political opportunists who are engaged in election campaigns and government functions who want to seem important while remaining “anonymous” sources.

One of the functions of the print and electronic journalists, especially the pundits who were given their rank because of their experience or unusual intelligence, is to convince the public that they are smarter than politicians, especially those they don’t like. That is why so many left-leaning Democrat journalists try to portray conservative Republican politicians and cabinet members as fools and charlatans, while the right-leaning Republican journalists do the same for Democrats.

The basic premise is that the opponent is always stupid and incompetent. And every once in a while, that thinking seeps into intramural politics, like when the Kennedy Democrats ridiculed Lyndon Johnson as an uncouth, unsophisticated Southern buffoon.

Some day soon I may do another column with examples of how the Republican journalists ridiculed and attacked Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson, while Democrats did the same for Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, but with particular vehemence in the case of George W. Bush.

For the moment, however, I wanted to focus on the singular lack of imagination among both journalists and government functionaries at all levels.

No Movies or TV?
Don’t these guys and gals ever go to the movies, watch television, or read current adventure fiction. The conflict between good and evil, the cunning of the bad guys has been grist for the mills of entertainment for years.

Ian Fleming’s James Bond had to put up with the most diabolical and fantastic dreams not only of Soviet agents but of free-lance bad guy networks like Smersh and Spectre.

In fact, throughout the Cold War, countless novelists created books that sold in the millions in which the good guys had to respond to the outlandish schemes of the bad guys. More recently, writers such as Tom Clancy had dealt with nuclear threats as well as the global perils posed by biological agents and chemical weapons of mass destruction.

If my memory serves, I can remember movies and television shows in which the bad guys—whether free-lance loonies, agents of a hostile government or agents of a band of terrorists—used buses, planes, ocean liners, water systems, air conditioners and countless other seemingly everyday items to cause great harm.

In fictional works, the good guys usually outsmart the bad, at least in the end. The countless victims of their evil are imaginary. But still, these fictional scenarios should prepare journalists and government officials to think more creatively. Some journalists—and some of the public—disdain fiction whether in a novel, motion picture or television. Yet fiction should prepare many to be ready to understand the diabolical cunning of the hate-filled terrorists we face today.

I suppose it is possible that journalists are required to come up with surprising news for every newscast or newspaper. They also have to make it sound like they have managed to pry some nugget of otherwise secret information from “reliable sources” who remain “anonymous.”

However, whatever their motivation in being surprised that terrorist scouts are videotaping Las Vegas, or large spectator sports venues, or financial centers, or key government buildings, there is no excuse for their twisting that information to promote a political candidate or agenda.

Promotions Proof
That al Qaeda is promoting promising young lunatics in their ranks to positions of leadership should be no surprise to anyone who has ever visited a supermarket or fast food restaurant. It is the natural way of things. But such a promotion policy always depends on the fact that there are openings at the higher levels.

In the case of al Qaeda, those openings have been created when the leaders became casualties in our war against them. So Bush should not derive bad news from the promotions but good news. Such promotions are a confirmation that his efforts to lead the free world and its military and intelligence forces against the terrorists are succeeding.

Michael Moore and his more subtle cronies in the journalistic community can twist the facts to promote their own candidate and agendas but they cannot escape realities.

We may not be scoring spectacular and exciting “touchdown” plays in the conflict with the terrorists, but we are making progress.

The unimaginative and largely unethical members of the press who twist the facts or use only selected facts to promote their own agendas may someday be as surprised as those who belittled Truman, Johnson, Eisenhower and Reagan and then had to eat their own words.

That the “War on Terrorism” happens to be going on during a bitter presidential election campaign is unfortunate, but it should not be used to frighten the uninformed and all too comfortable populace.