I blogged about this and the connection to Pulitzer Prize winning AP photo yesterday.

I don't think there is any such thing as non-subjective reporting. I believe it is neither possible nor desireable.

My blog entry includes a snippet of an email response allegedly from Jack Stokes, Editor at the Associated Press where he seems to thing it important to tell the insurgent's story as well.

Great points, Robin. Uh, you know who I mean ...

... if you assume that it is a journalist’s job to stay totally neutral when reporting war and other armed conflicts, then watching insurgents blow up soldiers and civilians is no different than being embedded with Coalition troops.

Years ago there was an excellent PBS series, "The Constitution, That Delicate Balance", in which public figures debated constitutional issues based on hypothetical situations.

On one of the shows, Peter Jennings was given a hypothetical situation where he was accompanying US troops in wartime, and he received information that an enemy force was about to attack. Should he warn the US troops? Jennings said that he would.

Mike Wallace then lectured Jennings, telling him that he'd just thrown all of his "objectivity" and "journalistic credibility" out of the window. An honest journalist never interferes in the events he is covering, and he sets aside all of his personal and national feelings. Jennings was totally cowed by this and reversed himself.

A military officer on the panel said that if that's the way it was, he didn't see why he should order his men to risk their lives rescuing journalists in combat, though he would do it anyway.

Obviously Wallace-style journalism would have no problem embedding reporters with insurgent groups, as a journalist is not only a stateless person but a sort of amoral and unemotional drone, with no regard for anything except journalistic objectivity.

Of course there is no such animal except in the mind of a journalist who spends four hours a day in a make-up chair, before going on television to make a sick joke out of "objectivity". A real reporter like Ernie Pyle or Joe Galloway would know better.

There are (at least) two different issues intertwined in this situation.

The first is the broad question of "reporting the other side", with many journalists like Stokes attempting to adopt a neutral position in an armed conflict. Some find that a principled position; others find it absurd or worse.

The second issue is the fact that in this particular case the insurgents are, arguably, not legal combatants according to the Geneva Conventions criteria. That makes this incident much more like a reporter tagging along for a gang killing than a reporter embedded with, say, the Nazi army.

The third issue is whether CBS knew - or WANTED to know - the background and affiliation of this photographer. They issued press credentials to him in their name - will they take moral responsibility for his actions excuted under the cover of that credential?

I linked to a description of the PBS discussion Glen mentions in the first UPDATE here.

Re #3 - The program was not "That Delicate Balance" - it was part of the related series "Ethics in America". The program can be viewed online here.

I have a better idea.

Have reporters 'declare' which 'side' they're on

I know it sounds simplistic, but it makes sense. Declare yourself an 'insurgent-imbedded', and you then have no moral obligation to 'affect the news' vis a viz your national interest, if you have one. But likewise, you're no different than the Melon Seller who has his cantelope blown to smithereens by a collateral shrapnel event. Poor Charlie, he can't elope.

Yet, even so, I can't really see Wallace's dogmatic approach as a human, and accept it quite. If I as an American were declared as
'gone native', and I were to witness roads being booby-trapped, I really would think twice about finding some way to get the hell out and warn "my side". I know it hurts the reporting, but damn it, who-the-fvck is paying your newspaper and/or video station for your salary and expenses, reporter-dude? Americans, if you're an American. It would be like watching a guard put a chain around a theatre emergency exit, and filming the melee that would ensue when someone shouts "fire" inside. I mean, hell: do reporters really morally abdicate all responsibility to perform humanitarian service instead of reporting, when the stakes are great?

But then, by my read, most reporters would clinically film a dying baby in a trash heap behind a high-school prom, to get a story of the moral terpitude of modern Teenagers. What about the moral terpitude of the reporter? Drop the fvckin' camera, dick. Become human and get that infant to the hospital! Use your cell-phone!

In fact, I see the 'insurgent imbedded' reporter as actually aiding and abetting the enemy: no reporter, no report. No report, no publicity, and the "movement" loses steam. Reporters, reports, films, American trucks and people (and not even necessarily "military combatants") being blown to flinders - gives additional political 'authenticity' to the movement, no matter how morally abaft it might be.

Would Wallace feel morally justified as a reporter to have been stationed in Auswitz or Buchenwald, or ... for a few years, carefully documenting in the abstreuse, the horrors inflicted upon humanity by another segment of the same? Would Wallace like to have been the "man on the ground" in Georgia [USSR] when Stalin was starving out millions and millions of innocents? Would he additionally -- all mind you to make his story more effective, I should think - additionally sidled up to the Stalinists, getting a nice plate of food every day, to keep up with their "point of view"? I mean, would he?

If "yes", then he is a monster no better than the worst Nazi or Stalinist that can be imagined. If "no", then there's hope.

And that is what we must guard against: when "reporters" gain an inalienable right to complete depravity and amoral dogmatism, then given most government's immunity from similar prosecution, does this not pave the way for special groups that always retain such immunity, even at the cost of humanism?

GoatGuy

If you think you should not interfere in events that you are reporting, you should not report on the events. Most reporters aren't simply interested in reporting events, they want to effect the outcome at some level.

The idea that there is independence, neutrality or objectivity in any reporting is naive. Even if the reporter declares a slant, it is not necessarily to be believed, not because it is a falsehood, but because the reporter has been misidentified. The best thing to do is learn from as many sources as possible what is going on and decide what you believe based on your experience with them.

Since Viet Nam and Watergate, it has become clear that reporters want to impeach authority and speak truth to power. Some times it is necessary to do those things, but a steady diet is difficult to prepare without compromises of the type being revealed almost weekly.

These moral source of the media behavior thus revealed is not unrelated to that of the corporate scandals we have endured. Too many have risen to power without respect for the duties that go with their responsibility. They seem motivated only by power and self interest. But it has ever been so.

From a simple (well actually, it isn't simple) physics perspective, it is impossible to observe something without affecting it in some way. There are no neutral observers, there can't be.

I can buy the idea that there is no such thing as perfectly neutral reporting. But does that mean that there is no way to judge between good and bad journalism other than whether it fits our own political biases?

No way to distinguish reporting that attempts to be evenhanded and fact-based from deliberate omissions of facts and/or tendentious interpretation of them?

Over at Random Probabilities, blogger Red Hunter draws a distinction between neutrality and objectivity.

What do you think???

Wallace's argument is sophistry in the extreme. If he were neutral, he would report the facts and that would be that.

But he doesn't do that. He reports the facts he wants the viewer to see (they call this exercise in politically motivated censorship "editing") and then tries to be Pontius Pilot and wash his hands of the resulting fuss.

No. There are no neutral observers to the human condition who are human beings.

This is nothing more than an exercise in justifying the unjust conduct of a group of people who think everyone else needs to be held to a set of standards but them.

That's a recipe for true disaster.

"#8 from ATM on April 10, 2005 09:00 PM
If you think you should not interfere in events that you are reporting, you should not report on the events."

I like ATM's point. In fact, if you are reporting the event you are interferring with it.

G.M.

It is not the military's place to determine media ethics, but given the attitude of the press it would be within the the military's right to boot deadweight reporters that won't pick a side. Taking a "neutral" reporter into battle would be akin to taking a child. The value system of most Americans obligates them to protect the helpless and this compromises a group of soldiers that need every eye and every gun working for the mission. As a parent I protest the inclusion of deadweight reporters when my son’s life is at risk. If a reporter is with the enemy, given the nature of this war (a media propaganda war), I’d say treat the reporter as the enemy. The real question is this: What is most important; success of the military and saftey of our soldiers, or getting a MSM report? Who in the world told MSM that news trumps life and peace? I'll wait for the news that the war is over and won before I'd compromise my son's life for news.

Damn CBS.
G.M.

These reporters and NO different than any other traitor who aids the enemy, Tokyo rose et al.

Gee, too bad we didnt get a little help from the times to give Ballance, by presenting the NAZI, point of view.

Nutrality, hmmph.

No is no such thing.

No what has happened here is far too many have lost the ability to gudge between good and evil.

I still remember the MSMBC reported hiding with terrorist while they lay in wait to kill jews.

I still remember, the look in her eyes, here comes some jews.

We are so far gone.

Kill a few million babies, kill your grandmother, kill a few million jews, whats the difference ?

Now that our tolerance of the amoral left has taken us here, too few seem willing to point out where we are, Germany, 1934-40 or so.

They get no pass from me, Walter Durranty's they are, all of them. and worse.

What is freakin hilarous is that Wallace was trying to say he is a neutral reporter, give me a break. His show and his choice of what stories to run is anything but. I know of no reporter who is not biased one way or another.

If any reporter working for a US company is found to be working with our enemy during wartime just so he can get a story, he should be tried for treason in my opinion. Especially if this reporter had knowledge of attacks against our troops, and either could have prevented it or helped our troops kill the attackers but did not do so...

I understand that this photographer was an iraqi, but he was employed by a US company...thats enough for me.

The second issue is the fact that in this particular case the insurgents are, arguably, not legal combatants according to the Geneva Conventions criteria.

could you clarify this Robin? Why aren't the insurgents covered under the Geneva Conventions?

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As to the larger issue.... I see absolutely nothing wrong with the fact than a Iraqi cameraman who was a stringer for CBS used his connections to get footage of attacks.

Lets switch this around a bit, because nationalism clearly distorts the journalistic issues involved here.

Lets say that during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, an Afghani cameraman was in contact with the anti-Soviet insurgents, and was detained because he had footage of insurgent attacks against Soviet forces in his camera.

What steps would it be appropriate for the Soviet Union to take against this cameraman?

__________________________________

Based on what has been reported so far, I don't see how he is a "security risk" simply because he has contacts within the insurgency who notify him of impending attacks. There are only two reasons that the US would want to detain him --- they want to restrict the flow of information coming out of Iraq, or they want to torture the guy.

Because, lets face it, if you think that a cameraman is being told of impending Iraqi insurgent attacks, the smart thing to do would be to keep a close eye on the guy, and find out which network he is connected with in order to "sweep it up."

One doubts that he would willingly give up his sources of information, anymore than Judith Miller is willing to tell us what she knows about who did much greater damage to America's national security by blowing Valerie Plame's cover as a covert CIA operative. And given what we already know about the use of torture by the Bush regime in Iraq, the odds are that this cameraman has electrodes hooked up to his genitals at this very moment.