US Raid on ISIS in Syria

Who do you think is excluded from based on this standard?

I guess we should forever scoff at anyone who ever reported on Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, Weapons of Mass Destruction, the bin Laden raid, the Duke Lacrosse rape case, the UVa gang rape, the death of Michael Brown.

I'm not arguing in favor of Hersh. I think a lot of folks living in glass houses are hurling rocks.

 

And, let's look at the sourcing in these Abu Sayyaf stories.

We can all agree that no one reporting on the story spoke to anyone who actually participated in the raid, right?

Now, what are the odds that the "source" even spoke to one of the operators that took part in the raid? I'm putting the odds at less than 10%. Pentagon spokespeople don't get briefed by the members of Delta Force.

So, we're probably looking at a third hand source.

The totality of reporting -- all the various reporters citing anonymous sources -- makes it look like a lot of reporting has been done, all with the same conclusion.

But, we know this isn't the case, because it rarely is. The people reporting on the raid likely all learned the "details" from the same source, in the same briefing/conference call, which is why we get the same buzz words in all the stories.

It's "trust us" journalism. But, why should the journalists trust their sources, and why should we trust the journalists?

 

All journalism is "trust us" journalism, to some extent.

If you don't trust the people reporting, which you obviously don't, then their reporting is worthless to you.

I don't know much about the sausage-making on this particular story, but I'd guess it's not much different from any reporting on any of a thousand other, similar stories. If you don't trust anything the government says, you probably won't care for any reporting on government in which "officials" are the sources.

It's as simple as that. And it goes for every story ever written.

 

Some events are actually witnessed by those reporting on it. In other cases, those reporting on it speak to the people involved in the event, and to witnesses.

And, with multiple participants/witnesses, and multiple reporters, you can get a pretty clear picture of what happened. Even when there are discrepancies, it's easier to flush them out, because it's out in the open.

In this case, we have (likely) one source, who was neither a participant nor a witness to the event, relating the events to multiple reporters.

There's no independent reporting. There are not multiple sources. (Or, to the degree that they are, they are all "authorized" anonymous sources, working off the same script.)

We don't know who provided the details to the source. We don't know what questions (if any) the source asked.

This is stenography. It's not reporting.

At least the Times was willing to tell us that they couldn't independently verify the details. And, Richard Engel admitted on Meet the Press that he had never previously heard of Abu Sayyaf.

We want -- we need -- a skeptical press; an independent press. We need a press that asks questions, and pushes back against pre-packaged narratives.

 

Reporters are not allowed on special-ops missions. The participants are usually sworn to secrecy.

Therefore, any story about any such missions by definition must originate with people who were not actually on the scene, or people who are violating sworn standards of conduct for some kind of agenda.

 

Right. And, we can safely assume that those reporting on the raid didn't all track down a Delta Force member, willing to violate his oath, within 12 hours of the raid's conclusion.

So, we have a spokesperson, operating under the agreed to moniker of U.S. government official, providing us with an approved narrative, that goes unquestioned.

Maybe that's better than nothing, but let's acknowledge it for what it is, and not pretend it's the definitive, factual accounting of what happened.

 

Maybe we could also acknowledge there are "sources" whose agenda is to paint certain government officials in as negative a context as possible regardless of the actual circumstances.

 

Anyone done that here?

All the stories I've seen are written from the same script.

 

It's an interesting life to lead when you read about a successful raid on ISIS and your first thought is the media bias angle.

 

The goal of the raid was to capture Abu Sayyaf, so while we can all be glad, and grateful, that all of our soldiers returned from the mission unharmed, and it resulted in dead ISIS militants, the capture of Sayyaf's wife, and the freeing of their Yazidi hostage, it's probably not correct to call the raid "successful", when it did not acheive its mission.

And, my complaint isn't to do with media bias. We see this kind of thing regardless of who is in the WH (though we saw less of it towards the end of the Bush WH, as the media had been burned previously, and had grown antagonistic towards Bush, and the war in Iraq).

My issue, and I think I've made it pretty clear, is with a media reporting a scripted version of events, that's approved, and selectively "leaked" to the, as fact.

That doesn't concern you?

That so few are concerned by it concerns me as much as that it happened.

 

Reporters don't go on these missions.

If they get reported -- at all -- it's because somebody decided to "leak" it, or else approved a "scripted" version of the events.

 

Right.

As much as I hate the rush to report something, anything, before anyone else, the modern landscape demands you report what you know, when you know it.

The environment the media admittedly created for itself is to put things out there, and correct later if necessary.

They're entirely at the mercy of the faith people put in them. These days, I'm not so sure it would be any different even with additional layers of verification. Not with the political climate the way it is. And not with the "narrative" some push that the media is always lying to you.