Utter bullshit. There were no pretty blondes at Son Tay, but you bet your ass that the American forces did their best to free the POWs that were supposed to be there.
American armed forces make extraordinary efforts to rescue POW, whenever actionable intelligence is available.
To argue against standard raiding tactics seems to miss the point. I can find little reason to blame anyone going into a potentially life-threatening situation for going in with as much strength as is feasible. As has been pointed out, to take the word of the Iraqi doctor and just stroll in would be foolish and unnecessarily endangering of American lives.
What concerns me more is that the story that we in America have heard is very different. If this new story represents the truth of the matter, then some troubling question come to the forefront. I certainly expect for my government to paint their actions in the best light possible short of lying. What I do not expect, at least until recently, is for the American media to also paint every American action in Iraq through the same rose-colored glasses. The most important question of this event is “where did the story the American public hear originate?” If it originated in our government, then some action should be taken against the source. If it originated in the press, then certainly the source is worthy of the same pillorization as the NYT reporter recently fired for lying in his stories. Again, this is assuming the the new story is true. If it turns out to be proven false, then the BBC and The Guardian have got some splainin’ to do.
True. But they don’t always get raw video footage of it.
I don’t know about the Guardian being a Tabloid quality paper or not. As for this story, it appeared prominently in the Toronto Star on May 5.
So, it did get exposure on this side of the Atlantic, (The Star is the largest circulation paper in Canada) but apparently not south of the 49th.
If the link doesn’t work, go to the Star site, and search for “Saving Private Lynch”
Don’t talk complete and utter rubbish, the Guardian is a fine newspaper with a long proud history.
Besides, the story was reported in many newspapers and news bulletins.
The Guardian isn’t a tabloid either is the BBC prog.
I guess that depends on if you are a liberal or conservative. Many see the NY Post as a tabloid too. There are bias news sources and more importantly there are bias news readers of those sources…
Wasn’t the BBC criticized by their own field reporters in Iraq for not accurately portraying what was happening?
Thats because the NYP IS a tabloid. Tabloid refers to the size of the paper.
the Guardian is a broadsheet.
ever hear of tabloid journalism? So, If you get a letter on a 8.5 X 14 inch paper, do you call the letter a legal?
Back to the story. Did the pentagon ever say Jessica was stabbed and/or shot. All I can remember is media reporting it…never saw a military press confrence or quote to a named military source saying she was.
OK, so let’s say the doctor’s story is completely accurate and not even a bit self-serving. Anyone remember the footage of the other captured soldiers run on Al Jazeera? The ones that, at least reportedly had bullet holes in their foreheads? Or the stories of the POWs from the last Gulf War? It was not unreasonable to assume that a POW might not be being treated in the best conceivable manner. And I think it was prudent, in the midst of a shooting war, to run the rescue mission in the way that they did, taking extreme precautions, even if they knew that there was likely to be little resistance.
So it made a good story as well. Not a bad thing for either the public or the troops who were probably happy to hear that the US would make extreme efforts to assure the safety of any POWs.
As for the “fought like a lion”, “bullet wounds” and other stories – blame the press. Clearly they escalated rumors and hearsay evidence to the stature of facts. (Again, anyone who takes any news story from the war, pro- or anti- without a grain of salt is hopelessly naive.)
So if even it was overhyped as a media ploy, I can’t get particularly upset over it. Yes, it was an interesting side-bar story, but after the second day, the only people who were sick to death of hearing about Pvt. Lynch were her immediate family and the press.
I know exactly what Tabloid journalism is, thank you very much. The guardian is far from tabloid journalism. Or do you only come to that conclusion because you don’t agree with it’s liberal slant?
Yes I have. Tabloid journalism (using the adjective “tabloid”) is the level of journalism normally found in a tabloid (using the noun “tabloid”).
Newspapers are generally either in tabloid or broadsheet format. Broadsheet papers are sometimes also referred to as “the qualities”. These formats are usually just named as “tabloid” and “broadsheet”. The Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph are examples of broadsheets. The Sun and The Mirror are examples of tabloids.
Hell, even dictionary.com agrees, describing a tabloid as “(n) A newspaper of small format giving the news in condensed form, usually with illustrated, often sensational material.”
How about we wait till some of us see the BBC Correspondent prog. BBC2 Sunday 19:15. The show is about the use of embedded journalists and wether the coalition was playing it straight with them.
no.
anyways, this thread is about the BBC documentary. The BBC had some of their own field reports critisizing them for not portraying the stories they were reprorting during the war accurately. The BBC is more liberal than CNN ever dreamed of being.
Here’s an article with your acclaimed Gaurdian reporting on BBC mistakes in the war coverage on a “daily basis” amoungst other things. My point being, the BBC is not the holy grail of news because it has some serious flaws…information from them should be taken with a grain of salt.
Like all media, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
I wonder how many Jayson Blairs there are out there in the mainstream press? It must be very tempting for some of these so called “reporters” to fabricate things. Just think about what a rush it must be for a reporter to make a juicy quote from a ficticous source and then watch all the lazy reporters picking the story up off the wire and placing it in their own news reports. How many times during the war did you hear from “unnamed intelligence or military sources” that 1) there weren’t enough troops 2) our only hope was for massive reinforcments 3) it is a quagmire 4) underestimated the enemy etc etc etc?
Well, I consider myself fairly to the left, but I, too, got pretty sick of the Grauniad during my time in England. It seemed they’d let anyone write a column for them, and some of those columnists are pretty crazed.
(Not to hijack this column too much, but here’s what a recent “guest columnist” of theirs had to say about my old college advisor: “Niall Ferguson is the Leni Riefenstahl of George Bush’s new imperial order” (8 Feb 2003). Oh, yeah, the same guy who wrote The Pity of War, probably the most damning condemnation of war I’ve seen in years. :rolleyes: )
Calling the Guardian “tabloid journalism” is going a bit too far, but, having read it for years, I can see why a lot of people think that way.
You do have to distinguish between the reporting and the editorial/opinion/lifestyle/issues pieces. Granted, a lot of the latter are bumwipe in many different publications, including the Guardian. However, in terms of investigative journalism, the Guardian is known for its quality, and has won awards etc.
Only when a Democratic President is in office. 
I’m sorry the Guardian is most defintely not a tabloid. Well for a start there’s obvious fact that it comes in a broadsheet not tabloid format, plus it’s reportive journalism is very good (probably the broadest and least opinated in the English dailies) and well, reportive.
However I do admit to disliking some of the columnists intensely as some of them do tend to spout shite.
So maybe the US military took a little bit of an artistic license with the whole story and didn’t restrain the media from embellishing it a bit. Meh, when does that not happen during a time of war? Doesn’t make the men and women of the US military any less heroic, there are more than enough examples of unheralded heroism we’ll never hear about to compensate if this one was exaggerated a bit.
We still handed the Iraqi army their asses on a platter, deposed a murderous dictator, and are in the process of rebuilding the nation. The exaggeration of a rescue operation doesn’t make those truths any less real.
Remember those dramatic photos and video of the D-Day Landing in '45 from “embedded journalists”?
Probably a staged operation.