Why the American Media No Longer Even Knows HOW to Report News

In his article this week, The People vs the Press, Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media related a story about a broadcast journalist in the military who found, on returning to the States, that the major media networks “don’t want to portray the good. They just want to focus on another car bomb, or they just want to focus on some more bloodshed.” At a March 22 press conference with President Bush, the question the journalist and his wife had for the President was, “What can we do to get that footage on CNN, on FOX, to get it on headline news, to get it on the local news?”

Is this, as Cliff suggested, because the “The media want us to fail in Iraq and the people want us to win?” I reread the interview by Lisa Myers of NBC with a Taliban commander broadcast on Nightly News on December 27, 2005 to see if I could find out.

There actually was no news IN that interview. In news writing the lead or the major facts of a story are supposed to be in the very first paragraph. And what was Lisa Myers very first paragraph? “Four years after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are showing renewed strength, using suicide bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. They are even training the next generation.”

That was something we all already knew, without interviewing a terrorist. What about Lisa Myers’ second paragraph? That was, “Since June 2005, 54 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan, by far the most lethal period since the U.S. invaded.” We also already knew that. So, exactly what “news” was reported in Lisa Myers’ and NBC’s expensive “interview” with a Taliban commander? There was no news whatsoever. What the article DID report was the Taliban commander’s OPINION.

Myers wrote: “NBC News interviewed Ismail in August and again this month. Both times, the Taliban made sure we could not provide their location to the U.S. military. An NBC producer was taken on a confusing seven hour odyssey to an unknown location, where Ismail then appeared.” And what did Myers learn from Ismail?

First we are told, “Ismail boasts that in June, he deliberately laid a trap for American forces.” That was not news. We already knew that

Then we were told in the article: that “Ismail’s men were waiting with a rocket-propelled grenade” when the terrorists’ tried unsuccessfully to get a Navy Seal to surrender.” We already knew that since it had taken place 4 months prior to her writing the article. Finally, Myers states:

“Ismail also predicts more bloodshed to come.” We already knew that. So, WHY did NBC spend all that money and time telling us the opinions of a terrorist commander? Is it because NBC wants the terrorists to win, thereby destroying the United States and eliminating their jobs?

I don’t really think so. I think the problem is that they simply do not know what news IS nor have they ever been taught how to report it. Instead, they have been trained from elementary school through journalism school how to report their opinions – not facts.

I’ve written about this off and on for 40 years. Recently, I had an experience with a college student grandson who hopes one day to be a doctor when he asked for some help on a writing assignment. My grandson’s assignment required him to write an 8 page researched paper on some aspect of globalization. He could choose the aspect.

Since he wants to follow his father’s footsteps to become a doctor, he chose to write about the globalization of medicine. Was it a good thing or a bad thing? Before he wrote the 8 page paper, first he had to write, for the professor, a 250 word description of his 8-page paper would be about and what his position on the globalization of medicine would be.

I pointed out that he really could not know what his position on globalization of medicine WAS until he’d done the research. Only, he had to IMMEDIATELY turn in the 250 words telling the professor what his position of globalization was, or he would get a bad grade, which might, of course, later affect his ability to get into Medical School. I soon discovered that my grandson could not get around the necessity of writing his 250 word opinion before doing the research, which of course is the exact opposite of what he will need to do as a doctor – first find the facts, THEN diagnose the problem. .

I’ve watched this method of teaching “writing” deteriorate the writing of journalists for 50 years. The problem is – schools no longer teach the basics of news writing. By the time students are in high school, in order to get good grades they HAVE to tell teachers their OPINIONS before doing any research. Then they have to search for the material to support their opinions. I’ve had conversations with college students who tell me quite seriously that there IS no such thing as facts. Students, including my grandson, KNOW the opinions of their teachers and also know the risks they take in coming up with any paper that contradicts teacher opinion. According to many, if not most, of their teachers, there IS no such thing as fact or truth. It is ALL someone’s opinion. Not only are students totally unable to tell the difference between facts and opinion, their instructors don’t know the difference either.

Yet, 50 years ago the very DEFINITION of “News” was a report that included facts pertaining to who, what, when, where, why and how of an event. By Lisa Myers own admission, the Taliban prohibited her from actually getting any actual facts or “news.” She was merely a conduit to the American public for the Taliban to express its OPINION of Americans and our military.

Almost without exception, whether the story is written from a liberal or a conservative position, the public is getting opinion, not news, because that is how writers are trained these days. If you want some journalist’s opinion of what’s going on in Iraq, reported largely from a protected hotel in Baghdad, read the papers or watch the TV News. If you want to know what the military is doing in Iraq, your best source of information is the Department of Defense or the various military websites maintained by troops IN Iraq. (For links to such sites click here).

Mary Mostert was one of the first female political commentators to be published in a major metropolitan newspaper in the 1960s. In recent years, Mary has researched, written, and edited articles for national talk show host Michael Reagan’s Information Interchange on the Internet, and for The REAGAN MONITOR, a monthly newsletter that provides in-depth information on key issues. She can be contacted at mary@bannerofliberty.com.