Category: Media

Claymore sends us a link to the LA Times which recounts the editor’s explanation on a live chat for their decision to release the photos that the military has slavishly denounced as “inappropriate;

In a live chat on latimes.com, Editor Davan Maharaj explained the decision to publish the material, especially the pictures, even though the events occurred two years ago. The publication comes at an especially sensitive time, with the U.S. and its NATO allies seeking to disengage from the Afghanistan war that began in October 2001.

“We considered this very carefully,” Maharaj said. “At the end of the day, our job is to publish information that our readers need to make informed decisions. We have a particular duty to report vigorously and impartially on all aspects of the American mission in Afghanistan. On balance, in this case, we felt that the public interest here was served by publishing a limited, but representative sample of these photos, along with a story explaining the circumstances under which they were taken.”

In response to a reader’s question about how the photographs were selected, Maharaj said taste and relevance were the guiding principles.

OK, Maharaj, tell us what decisions that the public can now make about our involvement in the war that they couldn’t have made on Friday before you published those photos. That war is terrible? They should be making the decision to stop their subscription to the LA Times – well, those two subscribers you still have.

No amount of high-minded rhetoric can convince me that the decision was “considered…carefully”. The decision was purely a business decision intended to have the blood lead their news that day. It was meant to shock and disgust readers and to portray US soldiers in a bad light, to paint with a broad brush all members of the services and hand more ammunition to the anti-war element on the West Coast. The decision was a juvenile and ill-considered decision based only on newspaper and advertising sales.

That Maharaj had to explain to his readers why they did what the LA Times did should tell him something about his readership in regards to the decision.

But Maharaj said that the safety of troops was among The Times’ concerns.

“The photographs were provided by a soldier in the unit “who was himself concerned that the photos reflected dysfunction in discipline and a breakdown in leadership that compromised the safety of the troops,” Maharaj said.

He went on to say that the newspaper weighed the impact of publication on troop safety and that reporter David Zucchino had numerous conversations with the appropriate military officials.

“When we made the decision to publish, the Pentagon asked us to wait 24 additional hours to protect troops depicted in the photographs,” Maharaj said. “We agreed to push back our publication date until the Pentagon told us they had taken the necessary precautions.

While I commend them for waiting on the military to protect the people in the pictures, what about the troops who aren’t in the photos who have to deal with the backlash in the war theater? By the way, Davan, people don’t turn over photos to the media because of their concern for the troops. If he really wanted to make a difference, the guy who gave you the photos would have given them to the military, either his unit or law enforcement, not the fricken LA Times as the first place to drop them off.

ADDED: My editor at Business Insider has many of the same thoughts I had. I guess that’s why I get business over there now.

Jeff Black, from MSNBC emailed us for a comment on the latest non-scandal that we discussed yesterday, the “photos with dead suicide bombers thingie”. I responded;

Jonn Lilyea, a retired Army sergeant who writes the blog “This Ain’t Hell,” said Wednesday that the media overly emphasizes negative stories about the troops and underplays positive stories.

The high-profile news coverage of the photographs “is a perfect example of the media blowing (expletive) out of proportion as long as the only ones who get hurt are the troops and their reputations,” Lilyea told msnbc.com.

He pointed to the case of Sgt. Dennis Weichel, of the Rhode Island National Guard, who gave his life to save an Afghan girl last month.

“Sure everyone covered (Weichel) but not to the extent they covered the urination videos or the burn pit Korans, or (alleged massacre of civilians by) Sgt. Bales.”

Now, think about this for a minute; we have TSO bringing us hot news from Afghanistan. Suppose he witnessed something that would bring discredit on the troops and their reputations. We all know that photographic evidence of such malfeasance would bump up our traffic considerably, and might generate another click or two on our ads, but do you think TSO would document that incident if he understood that it doesn’t represent more than the actions of a few? Or do you think that I would publish it, again understanding that it was the result of the actions of a few, but had the potential to smear all of the services who are mostly just guys and gals doing their jobs the way they know how to do it properly?

That’s the difference between blogs and the media – the media would run the story regardless of the effect that it would have on the troops and the conflict in general. Blogs are generally more responsible, the rational grown ups, if you will. There are times that we discuss things for months before we publish a word, just among ourselves in the milblog community.

It’s like I told Jake Diliberto on Facebook one time, before I answer a question from the media, I think about what the troops would want me to say if they were asked the question. Because when the media calls me a “retired platoon sergeant”, I understand that there’s an inherent responsibility in giving the right answer. I want the troops all to come home in the same number of pieces that they left us in. And we exist to give them a voice in the discussion.

We also light the torches and sharpen the pitch forks when there are fortress walls to be stormed, too.

By the way, the part that Jeff didn’t publish was the part I wrote about how this media frenzy is largely the fault of Leon Panetta and his staff who are ready to apologize for every perceived transgression and the media delights in those apologies and generates more of this false outrage. If they need me to be the guy who tells the media to GFY once-in-a-while, I’d gladly do it for a six-figure-salary.

By the way, TSO’s post from yesterday ended up in Business Insider yesterday and it seems like it was fairly popular.