This bothers me on so many levels I can't even verbalize them all coherently.
First, I don't consider Rolling Stone to be *that* liberal. Just left of center, really. With a fairly wide audience. So for them, as a magazine, to endorse this sort of behavior? Really just reinforces a mistrust between the civilian media and the military. If I were in the military, I'd probably assume that anyone who read and automatically believed what was printed in this article was beneath me. Does not engender trust or understanding between the civilian and military cohorts.
I've read some journalists (not main-stream ones, generally) who think that what Hastings did really shows how many journalists in DC, in positions of power, kowtow to their subject to keep their "in", or because it's comfortable. I recognize that there may be some validity to this argument, but there has to be a line, an on-the-record vs. background/off-the-record, and if the Army Times piece is true, then that was crossed.
And then. For the average American, since 2007, when Petraeus testified about Iraq before Congress and mainstream-media news coverage of the war there and in Afghanistan decreased, an article like this, which makes headlines, is really the only blip on their consciousness that we still have soldiers deployed. And it was negative. That CANNOT be good for the civilian/military relationship, which is already obviously strained at the upper levels by the fact that there are now so very few civilian leaders with military experience.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 02:07 am (UTC)First, I don't consider Rolling Stone to be *that* liberal. Just left of center, really. With a fairly wide audience. So for them, as a magazine, to endorse this sort of behavior? Really just reinforces a mistrust between the civilian media and the military. If I were in the military, I'd probably assume that anyone who read and automatically believed what was printed in this article was beneath me. Does not engender trust or understanding between the civilian and military cohorts.
I've read some journalists (not main-stream ones, generally) who think that what Hastings did really shows how many journalists in DC, in positions of power, kowtow to their subject to keep their "in", or because it's comfortable. I recognize that there may be some validity to this argument, but there has to be a line, an on-the-record vs. background/off-the-record, and if the Army Times piece is true, then that was crossed.
And then. For the average American, since 2007, when Petraeus testified about Iraq before Congress and mainstream-media news coverage of the war there and in Afghanistan decreased, an article like this, which makes headlines, is really the only blip on their consciousness that we still have soldiers deployed. And it was negative. That CANNOT be good for the civilian/military relationship, which is already obviously strained at the upper levels by the fact that there are now so very few civilian leaders with military experience.
GAH. I am incoherent in my frustration.