Sunday, June 29, 2008
Don't discount all news sources
Dan Radmacher
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From the RoundTable blog
Sometimes before I write a column, I like to bat around the topic on blogs. It's a good way to test arguments for weaknesses and to explore various aspects of a debate.
In doing that for my June 22 on the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on whether "enemy combatants" should be able to file habeas corpus petitions, I ran into something depressing: a mind completely closed to anything put forth in the media.
I had responded to a post by Jerry Fuhrman, former Roanoke Times columnist, at his From On High blog (blogfromonhigh.blogspot.com), and we were going back and forth about the issue.
He claimed that all the detainees at Guantãnamo had gotten their day in court -- in front of a military tribunal.
I pointed him to an article published by McClatchy Newspapers, "Deck stacked against detainees in legal proceedings."
Through interviews with former detainees and military defense attorneys and transcripts of tribunal sessions, McClatchy described how meaningless that "day in court" had been for most detainees.
Detainees or their attorneys could not present testimony from witnesses outside of Guantãnamo. The evidence presented against them was often hearsay, with no opportunity to challenge testimony or cross-examine witnesses.
Lt. Col. Colby C. Vokey, a Marine lawyer who was assigned to one of the military commission cases in 2005, told McClatchy, "It was a process designed to achieve convictions. ... There was no law present."
One of the regulars at Fuhrman's blog, who goes by WD, read the article and actually seemed to rethink his position for a moment. Here's what he wrote (I've cleaned up the punctuation a bit): "Dan, as a former member of two courts martial boards, and having acted as a defense counsel (got him off but not completely), I must say I was appalled by this report."
I was impressed. His past comments on the blog had not struck me as the product of an open mind. Then I read the rest of his post: "Then, I remembered one can no longer trust the 'news' media. I also note that both sides of the story were not told. I suspect there is a lot more to this than meets the lie. In short, you all can no longer be trusted."
The response depressed me. As I told him, he had taken the easy out to information that challenged his point of view -- he wrote it off as unreliable, for no apparent reason.
I don't know what he meant when he wrote that "both sides of the story were not told." Pentagon spokesmen and high-ranking officials were quoted at length defending the tribunals.
By all appearances, this was a solid piece of investigative reporting. It was fair, accurate and convincing.
But it was in the media and it didn't fit his ideological bias, so WD wrote it off -- and I doubt he's alone.
When I challenged him to point out any flaws in this article as opposed to a blanket denunciation of all media, WD replied, "In a word, Dan, Haditha. One is to continue to trust Time and the NY Times? The long running and concerted effort to discredit the media is self-inflicted. Clean up your act."
He has a point that many of the media's credibility wounds are self-inflicted -- though something tells me we still don't know the whole story about Haditha, an Iraqi village where Marines killed at least 15 civilians, including women and children, after an insurgent attack.
Regardless, neither Time or The New York Times was the source of the article WD dismissed. No fact in the article has been disputed as far as I know.
Guilt by association should go only so far.
A free press is vital to a functioning democracy. We all know that. But a free press doesn't matter if no one trusts it.
Of course, speaking of the press as a monolithic entity is a mistake. Newspapers, broadcast news and various outlets on the Internet are all part of the press, all part of how today's citizenry informs itself.
But what happens if I don't trust your media, you don't trust mine and the guy down the street doesn't trust anybody's?
I don't believe any medium should get a free pass. Slap us around when we make a mistake or don't live up to the high ethical standards we set for ourselves. But don't discount an important and accurate story because of the perceived sins of an entirely different news organization.
There has been a concerted effort for decades to discredit the media. If it is successful, the only beneficiaries will be those in power who will not have to worry that scrutiny of their actions will be taken seriously.
That's not just sad. It's dangerous.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
