The day journalism died

By Libby

Digby posts a reflective piece about Ashleigh Banfield of MSNBC, who emerged from the coverage of 9/11 as something of a hero and a media star. She led the way on embedded journalists in Afghanistan but she made a fatal mistake. Two really.

First she reported the whole story, interviewing parties from both sides of the conflict. That wounded her career but the fatal blow came when she told the truth in a speech at Kansas State University shortly after the invasion of Iraq. She criticized the embedding process and its santized coverage designed to glorify the war without showing its real life consequences.

You really should read the whole post, but here's a key quote.

This TV show that we just gave you was extraordinarily entertaining, and I really hope that the legacy that it leaves behind is not one that shows war as glorious, because there's nothing more dangerous than a democracy that thinks this is a glorious thing to do.

War is ugly and it's dangerous, and in this world the way we are discussed on the Arab street, it feeds and fuels their hatred and their desire to kill themselves to take out Americans. It's a dangerous thing to propagate.

She was demoted immediately and fired a few months later and the rest of the journalists got the message loud and clear. The path to success was in wrapping oneself in the flag and uncritically delivering the White House press releases. Truthiness was the new order of the day and anyone who dared to offer the bare facts in any public forum, no matter how obscure, would find themselves banished to the Siberia of TV's wasteland.

Banfield lost a promising career. The rest of us lost our only access to televised truth when Fox "News" was anointed as standard bearer for the White House and chief cheerleader of the GOP.