Our Objective Press

Yeah, you can tell that this post is gonna be pretty snide. Anyway, I saw the lead AP photo on Yahoo this morning. You can take a look here. Another day in Iraq, another car bombing. That wasn't what caught my eye. It was the wording in the caption:

The attack which killed at least five people and injured 25, was the latest in a spate of bombings to target police as part of insurgents' bid to undermine Iraq's progress since an interim government took power in the end of June.

That's right. It's all a bid to undermine progress in Iraq! Rah rah us! Goooooooo team!

What the hell? Progress? Check out this article by Robert Fisk that we linked to yesterday. Does that sound like progress to you? Man, I wish we had more progress like that! 700 Iraqis killed in Baghdad just last month, 54 dead US soldiers, the electricity is on for less than four hours each day, the streets STILL fill with sewage--gotta love that progress. You'd think those Iraqi guys would show a little gratitude, wouldn't you?

For the record, the reporting from our press wasn't even this terrible in the nineteenth century. Consider the following New York Times report from 1876 following Custer's debacle at Little Big Horn:

LATEST ACCOUNTS OF THE CHARGE. FORCE OF FOUR THOUSAND INDIANS IN POSITION ATTACKED BY LESS THAN FOUR HUNDRED TROOPS - OPINIONS OF LEADING ARMY OFFICERS OF THE DEED AND ITS CONSEQUENCES - FEELING IN THE COMMUNITY OVER THE DISASTER.

The dispatches giving an account of the slaughter of Gen. Custer's command, published in THE TIMES of yesterday, are confirmed and supplemented by official reports from Gen. A. H. Terry, commanding the expedition. On June 25 Gen. Custer's command came upon the main camp of Sitting Bull, and at once attacked it, charging the thickest part of it with five companies, Major Reno, with seven companies attacking on the other side. the soldiers were repulsed and a wholesale slaughter ensued. Gen. Custer, his brother, his nephew, and his brother-in-law were killed, and not one of his detachment escaped. The Indians surrounded Major Reno's command and held them in the hills during a whole day, but Gibbon's command came up and the Indians left. The number of killed is stated at 300 and the wounded at 31. Two hundred and seven men are said to have been buried in one place. The list of killed includes seventeen commissioned officers.

It is the opinion of Army officers in Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia, including Gens. Sherman and Sheridan, that Gen. Custer was rashly imprudent to attack such a large number of Indians, Sitting Bull's force being 4,000 strong. Gen. Sherman thinks that the accounts of the disaster are exaggerated. The wounded soldiers are being conveyed to Fort Lincoln. Additional details are anxiously awaited throughout the country.

That's right. Even in the 1800's, the news media in this country could call a spade a spade. Custer did something incredibly stupid (I don't know of any military tactician who advocates a frontal assault when one is outnumbered ten-to-one), and the press said so. They didn't claim that this was just a continuation of the Indians' resistance to the divine gift of Progress brought to these fertile shores by the White Man. Granted, the NYT still took the side of the US Army, but they didn't just repeat what some shnook from DC told them to say.

Man, it would be neat if we had a free press in this country.