First, esteemed “media critic” gets handed his ass by a correspondent.
KURTZ: But critics would say, well, no wonder people back home think things are falling apart because we get this steady drumbeat of negativity from the correspondents there.
LOGAN: Well, who says things aren’t falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn’t see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.
What about all the American soldiers that died this week that you didn’t see on our screens? I mean, we’ve reported on reconstruction stories over and over again…I mean, I really resent the fact that people say that we’re not reflecting the true picture here. That’s totally unfair and it’s really unfounded.
…Our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things. They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can’t you find them? You don’t think that I haven’t been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let’s see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can’t take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they’re going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.Oh, sorry, we can’t show this reconstruction project because then that’s going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked. I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country….So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?
Then bloviating Bush sycophant suits up in his camoflage Depends and goes to New York — the front line in the war on terror:
Blogoland: Hugh Hewitt, Terror Warrior:
The third-tier talk show host strapped on his kevlar helmet and bravely reported from the front lines of the terror war while interviewing Michael Ware, a Time Baghdad correspondent:
MW: Let’s look at it this way. I mean, you’re sitting back in a comfortable radio studio, far from the realities of this war.
HH: Actually, Michael, let me interrupt you.
MW: If anyone has a right…
HH: Michael, one second.
MW: If anyone has a right to complain, that’s what…
HH: I’m sitting in the Empire State Building. Michael, I’m sitting in the Empire State Building, which has been in the past, and could be again, a target. Because in downtown Manhattan, it’s not comfortable, although it’s a lot safer than where you are, people always are three miles away from where the jihadis last spoke in America. So that’s…civilians have a stake in this. Although you are on the front line, this was the front line four and a half years ago.
How the hell do these people leave the house everyday?
And best of all, a GOP candidate for the US House tries to fob off a picture of a peaceful suburban street in Istanbul as one of a street in Baghdad. Follow the link and read on: it gets better. The picture he ends up using is some long-distance shot — no people, no details — as if he was hiding in the Green Zone, just as he accuses the liberal media of doing.