BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

At the front

5 comments on At the front

At the front

: Reporters are either a brave or stupid lot but they do risk their lives to try to bring us the news. See Christian Science Monitor reporter Scott Baldauf’s account of a caravan of journalists who dared to go to ground zero in Najaf.

On the horizon we could see the gold dome of the shrine.

If anyone was going to turn back, now was the time. Eighteen cars suddenly dwindled to eight.

We moved past one more US checkpoint, and then into a no man’s land. To our right was the old cemetery, site of what US officials have called the heaviest hand-to-hand fighting US forces have seen since Vietnam. Ahead of us, we could see Mahdi Army fighters moving around into firing position. We waved our white flag and proceeded slowly.

[via Lost Remote]

5 responses to “At the front”

  1. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    “Reporters are trained to question authority”
    Who does the training? Where does it occur?
    Why don’t they question all authority?
    How do they choose which authority to question and which to protect?
    So many questions from one little off-hand remark.
    Perhaps this is why the journalistic profession and the print and broadcasters are losing their relevance. Arrogant assumptions that readers are children to be spoonfed and led to the proper conclusions is insulting. Reporting from a bias of “trained to challenge authority” does not give the audience any perspective of the authority as it stands. What we are given is a reaction, a story of the challenge, a report of the bravery of the trained challenger, the challengers reaction as an adversary to response of authority to challenge. We don’t get facts in the fundamental Who, What, When, Where, Why, How of an event. We get a Stockholm Syndrome report of the losers who are trapped by events of their own making. We never get details to make our own judgement.

  2. Brian Perry Avatar
    Brian Perry

    “They were voluntary human shields, the youngest perhaps 8 years old, the oldest 70.”
    Another questionable sentence. Nice to hear that the authority-questioning journalists now consider 8 year-olds capable of offering themselves up as human shields. Boy, that Sadr sure is a hero, using children to “shield” his “uprising”! Maybe he could round up some blind people or kids in wheelchairs.
    The reporter in this article doesn’t sound like a professional so much as a typical ISM tool with a press pass.

  3. paladin Avatar
    paladin

    The savvy reporters know they are a vital component of terrorism, and therefore have no reason to fear terrorists – the terrorists need the media too much to harm them – the terrorists will never harm a journalist for that reason, and the press knows it.

  4. Franky Avatar
    Franky

    Daniel Pearl

  5. Brian Perry Avatar
    Brian Perry

    Let’s not forget why Daniel Pearl was killed- he was actually finding information that would hurt the terrorists. The fact that others in the media don’t need to fear terrorists…well I suppose the reason they’re safe is self-evident.