I wasn’t interested in some journalist getting fired. The news buzzed by me as quickly as it did when that talk-show host got thrown out of Iraq. I didn’t recognize the name and I certainly didn’t recognize his somewhat ugly face even though I’m assured by every article I have read since that this Arnett guy is someone I should know about. What can I say, I don’t watch that much TV?
Then I stumbled upon Walter Cronkite’s editorial at the New York Times. That sparked my interest. I recognized Cronkite’s name because I think I have seen him, or rather recordings and impersonations of him, in various historically set Hollywood productions.
Without knowing any details of the Arnett affair, in which the journalist gave an interview to Iraqi TV and said some disheartening things about the US military effort, the Cronkite editorial was enough to get me really interested. Here was a fascinating little piece to work with.
It began with Walter basically calling Peter a traitor…and I am always interested in traitors.
“Under the Constitution, giving ‘aid and comfort’ to a wartime enemy can lead to a charge of treason. So far as I know no one has yet suggested that Peter Arnett be charged with that capital offense. But it seems that Mr. Arnett hangs by a rope of his own weaving.”
This was how Walter began. I was fascinated by the idea of a journalist, that paragon of objectivity, that crusader for the truth, essentially charging another journalist with treason. As I soon discovered, this was a suggestion being repeated all over America’s hefty chunk of the Web. For example, some journalist in Seattle calls Peter an idiot for, “having betrayed not only his colleagues and his profession, but his country.” Another editorial said that Mr. Arnett, “exemplified everything a great journalist is not”. Brent Baker of the Media Research Center was quoted as saying his views “aided the enemy’s propaganda and boosted the morale of the army by telling them they are winning”
I hardly know where to start. Perhaps before I go any further I should begin with the obvious: if there is, as a Tim Goodman suggests, some golden rule about journalists not “becoming part of the story” and that this is somehow the ultimate betrayal of their profession, than there is little doubt that Arnett’s submission to an Iraqi television interview is a pretty straightforward example of a violation of that rule. As such, he may have earned the scorn of his colleagues, and even perhaps the loss of his job.
I will touch on this again below, but this is really not what this is about. This issue is not, as America’s favorite idiot Rush Limbaugh claims, about journalistic principles being violated. It is not about “becoming part of the story” and betraying the golden rule.
It is about, as Walter says, providing “aid and comfort” to our enemy. Yes, not “the” enemy but “our” enemy. This becomes perfectly obvious when in a sympathetic, but contradictory moment, Walter concedes that Arnett’s reporting from Baghdad was perhaps once “of some value to our own military”.
The New Zealand born reporter apparently became a naturalized US citizen just before the first Gulf War. The American Family Associated has started a petition to have his passport revoked.
According to Walter not only did Arnett “besmirch” his reputation but he “offended a nation” and now because of his treason, “Americans” have lost a source in Baghdad which contributed “to our knowledge of a mysterious enemy.”
Our military…Our enemy…The Nation’s enemy…
Our “mysterious” Oriental foe is now rallied like never before to wage war against our young boys in the field thanks to the comforting words of an American traitor who declared that, “The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance, now they are trying to write another war plan.”
Orville Schell, dean of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, pointed to the heart of things when he was quoted as saying, “I think [Peter] is a little embedded on the Iraq side…It’s a different master.”
In today’s Daily Mirror, where Arnett, the Traitor, quickly found re-employement, Arnett declared he was in “shock and awe” at being fired and that his NBC career “was turned to ashes” because he “stated the obvious to Iraqi television.”
Anyone who has been watching the conflict with a critical eye is under huge temptation to criticize “the media” as if it were a monolithic entity whose behavior has deteriorated from some state of former excellence. This is mistaken, not merely because there is no unitary monolith, but because the premise and dream of former glory is as elusive as those parallel yearnings of the Nation. It is not a question of losing innocence, but of rediscovering original sin.
There should be no illusions now, the “information age” as applied to the context of wartime media is not about greater access to, and better analysis of the news from the front. Our noble “embedded” journalists have not lifted the fog of war from our otherwise clear perception, but rather paved the desert with disinformation.
There is no need to list examples. A few moments of reflection will remind all of us that while Arnett’s voluntary submission to a television interview by a government control media source is a clear example of providing “aid and comfort” to Iraq’s battered people, there can be no doubt that America’s own media is deeply complicit in providing “aid and comfort” to our own in so many more and less subtle ways.
Those who find this disturbing surely join me in a lonely minority. However, those who don’t will have to answer some very difficult questions about the hypocrisies of journalistic “integrity” which gave birth to this war’s first traitor. After all, we wouldn’t want to end up, as Walter Cronkite entitles his editorial, “Speaking to the Enemy”.