Media serve country well as bearers of bad news

The media get blamed for a lot of things, and that’s OK. We dish out the criticism freely, and sometimes we get too thin-skinned about facing return fire.

In some cases, though, we get blamed simply for being the messenger. It is not the media’s fault, for example, that Sarah Palin wasn’t qualified to be vice president. We didn’t pick her, and it’s not our fault that, according to the McCain campaign staff, she didn’t know that Africa was a continent.

Back in the early days of the Iraq war, you may recall, the media also got a lot of criticism for “not reporting all the good things that were happening in Iraq.” Everybody from the president and generals to actor Bruce Willis and citizens writing letters to the editor were complaining about the harsh reports coming out of Baghdad and Anbar province.

There were insinuations and even allegations of treason, and claims that the left-wing media wanted the United States to lose the war or were simply playing out their anti-Bush bias. Conservative commentators such as Ralph Peters, a former infantry officer, claimed that “the body count cherished by the media is the number of our own troops dead and wounded,” suggesting that reporters were playing into al-Qaida’s hands.

But what happened next is important. That reporting created a political momentum for change in both U.S. strategy and leadership. After the ‘06 midterm elections, President Bush finally ended months of denial and acknowledged the truth, that events in Iraq were spiraling out of control and that “the situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me.”

Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, appointed a new commanding general for Iraq in David Petraeus, and announced what came to be known as the surge.

Whatever the future holds for Iraq, it is undeniably a more secure place today than it was a few years ago. And it was the media, doing its duty by reporting honestly, that helped create the political space and political momentum to allow that change to take place.

A similar dynamic could be seen recently in Afghanistan. After a firefight and aerial assault in a village called Azizabad, initial reports from the U.S. military insisted that civilian deaths had been minimal, an account confirmed by Oliver North with a Fox News crew in the area. But when Afghani sources insisted otherwise, claiming a significant number of deaths to women and children, U.S. media reported those claims as well.

To some, the media was once again playing into the hands of al-Qaida. But forced to look further by pressure from the Afghan government and the media, the U.S. military discovered that the Afghani version of events appears to have been closer to the truth. Because of that discovery, U.S. rules involving use of air power have changed for the better, reducing the risk of civilian casualties and thus improving American hopes for success in the region.

Denying the truth, as some tried to do, would have saved the United States some embarrassment and criticism in the short term, but it also would have allowed the previous policy to continue, with long-term harm to our interests.

The American system is built on a faith in the truth. And while none of us can know that truth in its entirety, we do know that our nation’s best interests are not served by trying to silence information either through government rule or by public intimidation.

That applies across the board. At the moment, conservatives have worked themselves into a frenzy at the thought that Democrats might try to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. That rule, abolished in 1987, required broadcast outlets to give equal amounts of time to competing viewpoints. Conservatives fear that if the policy is reinstated, it will doom conservative talk radio.

Personally, I think that fear has been ginned up by the conservatives themselves to satisfy their need to feel persecuted. If Democrats really did try to push such a change, it would be both a big surprise and a foolish mistake, and I expect it wouldn’t get very far.

jbookman@ajc.com

Blog with Jay Bookman all week at ajc.com/opinion.