Instaflub

Matt Welch makes quite reasonable points about news media and the war, to which Instapundit responds in characteristically lame fashion. Welch notes that if Americans think the press is "on the other side" in the War on Terror, then Americans are wrong, and Reynolds does neither the press nor press freedom any favors by feeding that false perception.

Reynolds responds that nobody believes reporters actually want to lose the war (with one possible exception). But he says they act "almost as if" they do. When my first-year students write something like that, I pull out my marking pen. To say that I almost won a Pulitzer Prize is just another way of saying I didn't win a Pulitzer Prize. Write what you mean to say, I tell them, not what you almost mean to say. So if Reynolds agrees with Welch that reporters aren't disloyal, why does he call Welch's argument "weak"?

To do so, he has to strain logic. He says that "leading representatives" of journalism are loyal not to the United States but to journalism. I'm no "leading representative," but I've been an American for 54 years and a journalist for 25. I've yet to detect any meaningful conflict between my citizenship and my profession. The only conflict Instapundit cites is a hypothetical one that actually is rather easy to answer but takes time that I don't have right now. Journalism, practiced properly, serves the cause of truth, and truth serves the cause of freedom, so the better the journalism the stronger the country. If American soldiers are flushing Qurans down the toilet, then Americans ought to know about it because Americans are ultimately responsible for the behavior of their soldiers. If soldiers aren't flushing the Quran, then nobody should be reporting that they are. The question is strictly one of competence, not of loyalty.

Instapundit then tosses out a few sloppy characterizations. First: "You go out of your way to report bad news, and bury the good news." Yes, reporters do go out of their way to report bad news because almost no bad news would get reported if they didn't. Big companies and the government pay people to make sure the good news gets out. Because reporting bad news is harder work than reporting good news, and because readers tend to react more strongly to it (imagine how much attention Instapundit would ever devote to a story Newsweek reported accurately), bad news is often overplayed. But that's the nature of the beast and irrelevant to the larger point about loyalty. Second: "[You] treat all positive news as presumptive lies." That's just presumptive bunk. To give just one of thousands of possible examples: Voter turnout in Iraqi elections. Positive news, right? Presumptive lie? Who says?

Finally, Reynolds offers an interesting comparison to coverage of racial issues. He notes, correctly, that the press changed the way it reported on minorities in response to an understanding that the old way of covering race was destructive. What he doesn't note is that the change took a very long time. When I was a cub reporter, it was still common to get calls from people who wanted to know whether an accused criminal was black or white, and who couldn't understand why we wouldn't print that. In the late '70s, we were still struggling to overcome habits of thought and mind that had ruled the press and the nation for well over 100 years. And the change came only after a couple of enormous national convulsions that finally forced the press and the public to face up to their attitudes about race.

The point is that the press (with some honorable exceptions) didn't exactly lead the way in shaping public attitudes about race. The press reflected what the public thought, which tends, unfortunately, to be what the press typically does. For Instapundit to latch onto that as a model for covering the War on Terror shows how weak his grasp of these issues is.

To accuse reporters of wanting the terrorists to win is essentially to accuse them not only of a suicidal impulse but also of treason. And to accuse them of acting "almost as if they" wanted terrorists to win is to accuse them of "almost treason" or, perhaps, to "almost accuse them of treason." If Reynolds has the courage and the evidence to make the treason charge, then he should do so explicitly, naming names and preparing legal briefs. If he lacks the courage and the evidence, then he should do what Newsweek ought to have done: Shut up.