Media Bias Against Defense
by Frank Salvato

Recently Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held a town hall style news conference in Kuwait. The audience and participants in this news conference were supposed to be Kuwaiti based US troops awaiting deployment to Iraq. But just like any other simple, straightforward thing presented in it, the fifth column element within the mainstream media had to complicate the situation by adding a component that can only be described as tactically underhanded. This shouldn't surprise us.

It would seem that today's mainstream media deems itself exempt from any rule or ethic. We saw it in 60 Minute II's use of documents so ineptly altered that a blind helper monkey would have discarded them as forgeries. We saw it again in the biased force-feeding of the Abu Ghraib story to the American people by the New York Times. We saw it in the existence of Jason Blair and we see it still in the overtly biased writings of jaded, radical has-beens like Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman. Where a “journalist” used to seek the corroboration of multiple independent sources as a standard for verifying the facts of a story, today we see the repeated and almost exclusive use of leaked information from unnamed sources as the standard. While the media insists we should always question authority they are also insisting that we trust them to tell the truth.

While the question posed to Secretary Rumsfeld was legitimate, it was disingenuous. Rather than being an inquiry from a member of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, the question about armor plating for the Humvees used in Iraq was planted by a reporter from the Chattanooga Times Free Press who is embedded with the unit. This distorts the very nature of the event, a town hall style news conference featuring questions from the troops, not the press. So, once again, the “rules of engagement” were laid out well in advance and once again the media felt compelled to exempt themselves from adhering to them. This may not be as serious as shooting at our soldiers from the confines of a mosque or feigning death in order to kill our soldiers as they tend to wounded enemy combatants but the total disregard for the ground rules created so the media could cover the event was outrageous.

Secretary Rumsfeld's statement, "As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want," is a fair statement. Obviously, we all want our troops to have the very best equipment and training. But in this age of hindsight accusations and instant gratification it is easy to forget that there is more to the process of military procurement and equipment production than the will of the Secretary of Defense, especially any one secretary. It takes years in the procurement pipeline to produce the equipment used today. Moreover, Congress has a very integral part in what the Defense Department can and cannot do when it comes to procurement, training and equipment. That's why John Kerry's statement about voting for the $87 billion dollar supplemental package for our troops in Iraq before he voted against it was so hypocritical.

Long gone are the days when the news reporter was held in high esteem. A recent Gallup Poll on honesty and ethical standards demonstrated that reporters rated poorly in the public's eyes, and rightly so. It used to be that the quest for truth was the ultimate goal for the reporter. Now it would seem that the scoop, the almighty rating and the advancement of ideological agendas trump the truth. And the mainstream media wonders why the American public is turning to alternative sources for the news.

Frank Salvato is a political media consultant and managing editor for TheRant.us. His pieces are regularly featured in Townhall.com. He has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and numerous radio shows. His pieces have been recognized by the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention and are periodically featured in The Washington Times as well as other national and international publications.

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