As much as I am emotionally invested in the role of journalists in terrorism, I am more intellectually interested in your feedback on my “Theory of Everything Journalism”.

Photographers Try to Avoid Staged Moments
The Associated Press – is THE LIAR OF THE MONTH July 2004 at ‘Take-A-Pen’ !!! and The Stories Behind the Pictures! (Not to get into an Israel/Palestine argument, but I love the photo behind the photo stories for their “pull back the curtain” transparency).

But I do think there is a difference for professional journalism/ethics between a family inviting journalists into their home in anticipation of a government raid, and terrorists inviting journalists to “complete the act” by attending the act under a cloak of “nowhere”, recording and publishing it for mass distribution.

1- How did the photog get in there ahead of the feds?
2- What was the fisherman doing there?

i.e. a set-up

I am largely in agreement with Kunkel. But I think all such decisions should be case by case.

Finishing the Work of the Terrorists: “Any news outlet — or any private individual, for that matter — who makes available footage of the actual beheadings is, to my mind, an accessory to the crime itself,” says [Tom] Kunkel, dean of journalism at the University of Maryland. “Those are the individuals who are essentially finishing the work of the terrorists, by delivering their grisly ‘message.’ ” This was said in the Los Angeles Times in June, “Web Amplifies Message of Primitive Executions.”

Reactions to “What if Everything Changed for American Journalists on September 11th?”

I had also said “modern terrorism incorporates modern journalism,” and that I found it “impossible to believe that people in the news tribe are unaware of their tribe’s incorporation by terror, their inadvertent, unwished-for status as accessories to the act.”

1. Jack Stokes, the AP’s director of media relations, is a spinning his ass off.

2. I’m too angry to comment further.

(via Instapundit) POWER LINE: “Am I missing something, or has the AP now admitted everything it was charged with by Wretchard?” Wretchard, meanwhile, has another question. And Roger Simon is unhappy.

5. And bringing up the rear are intergroup tournaments, battles which force each collective entity, each group brain, to continually churn out fresh innovations for the sake of survival.

Early in my own career I did an investigative report on rural poverty that led me to the same conclusion: that we sometimes employ dishonest or morally compromising means to serve what we believe to be honest and morally justifiable ends. However we put it, rationalization is involved. Such is also often the case with the Gotcha! game. Yeah, we win, but what, besides the exposed butts of those whose pants we pull down? In some cases, big things, sure. In others, not much.

Mental hurdle…

McGill: Just so, it’s hard for journalists to stay consistently aware just where they are in this process, especially whether they are using or being used. Whether they are being honest brokers of the truth, or pawns of larger forces peddling bought-and-paid-for versions of truth.

Complex people as players in a complex system.

Spell checker? Hmmmm ….

CNN Transcript

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, how do we win the war in the media? It seems like that is the place where we’re getting beat up more than anybody else. I’ve been here — this is my third tour over here, and we have done some amazing things. And it seems like the enemy’s Web sites and everything else are all over the media, and they love it. But the thing is, is everything we do good, no matter if it’s helping a little kid or building a new school, the public affairs sends out the message, but the media doesn’t pick up on it. How do we win the propaganda war?

RUMSFELD: That does not sound like a question that was planted by the press.

(LAUGHTER)

RUMSFELD: That happens sometimes. It’s one of the hardest things we do in our country. We have freedom of the press. We believe in that. We believe that democracy can take that massive misinformation and differing of views, and that free people can synthesize all of that and find their way to right decisions.

Out here, it’s particularly tough. Everything we do here is harder, because of television stations like Al Jazeera and al-Arabiya and the constant negative approach. You don’t hear about the schools are open and the hospitals are open and the clinics are open, and the fact that the stock markets are open and the Iraqi currency is steady, and the fact that there have been something like 140,000 refugees coming from other countries back into this country. They’re voting with their feet, because they believe this is a country of the future.

You don’t read about that. You read about every single negative thing that anyone can find to report.

I was talking to a group of congressmen and senators the other day, and there were a couple of them who had negative things to say, and they were in the press in five minutes. There were 15 or 20 that had positive things to say about what’s going on in Iraq, and they couldn’t get on television. Television just said we’re not interested. That’s just sorry. So, it is, I guess, what’s news has to be bad news to get on the press.

And the truth is, however, it gets through eventually. There are people in the United States who understand what’s really going on over here. They do understand that thousands of acts of kindness and compassion and support that are taking place all across this country. They do understand that large portions of this country are relatively peaceful. And something like 14 out of 18 of the problems it’s had, incidents of down around five a day as opposed to the ones in certain places like Baghdad that are considerably higher.

And the Internet is helping. More and more people are seeing things that are taking the conventional wisdom and critiquing it and arguing it and debating it. And that’s a good thing.

So, we are a great country. And we can benefit from having a free press. And from time to time people will be concerned about it. But in the last analysis, look at where we’ve come as a country, because we have had a free press.

And we’ve — I mean, I’ve got a great deal of confidence in the center of gravity of the American people. What hurts most is in the region, where the neighboring countries whose help we need are constantly being barraged with truly vicious inaccuracies about what’s taking place in this country. And it’s conscious. It’s consistent. It’s persistent. And it makes everything we try to do in neighboring countries, where we’re looking for support, vastly more difficult.

And we, as a country, don’t do that. We don’t go out and hire journalists and propagandize and lie and put people on payroll so that they’ll say what you want. We just don’t do that. And they do. And that’s happening. And Al Jazeera is right there at the top.