“Many voices”–mostly from the Pentagon.
The New York Times (11/13/11) had a Sunday Style section profile of ABC Pentagon correspondent Martha Raddatz that started off on a bad note—only to get much worse.
First the bad:
If there has been a glamour beat in television news in recent years, it may well be war correspondent. Starting with the original “Scud Stud,” Arthur Kent of NBC in the 1991 gulf war, conflict reporters, including the current slate of Richard Engel (NBC), Lara Logan (CBS) and Ms. Raddatz’s ABC colleague Alexander Marquardt, have become news media celebrities not just for acting fearless but for looking fabulous.
You might think the fact that Lara Logan was sexually assaulted while reporting from Egypt—which the Times piece mentions toward the end—would make Times reporter Jennifer Conlin think twice about referring to war coverage as a “glamour beat.” But then you probably wouldn’t have introduced the subject of your profile this way:
Glamour is probably not an adjective at the forefront of Ms. Raddatz’s viewers’ minds. At 58, she is older than most of her on-air competitors, and though she looks great—petite, blond and remarkably put together—she is generally known less for her on-air presence than for the emotional detail of her reports.
I suppose a Style profile is the place one should expect a reporter to point out that a female TV reporter is “put together” and yet still not totally glamorous.
Then the piece gets much worse. Conlin writes:
Her approach to the beat is to cover war in its entirety, not just not on the battlefield.
What does that mean? The piece says Raddatz goes to warzones, which is part of the job. What they seem to be saying is that she knows to keep American troops first: “Her network of sources also includes numerous families at bases back home.” Again, it’s hard to see how that would all that remarkable for a network correspondent.
The truth is that Raddatz is a faithful Pentagon correspondent who rarely strays from the preferred storyline. Drone strikes in Afghanistan? Sure, they kill innocents, but there’s no other way, according to Raddatz:
They simply have to carry out air strikes over there. It’s a very rapid response. It’s real-time intelligence. It’s certainly flawed at some points.
But I’ve been on these missions. I’ve been on a combat mission in a fighter jet. I’ve seen all the very, very careful steps they take. They go through what’s called the nine line. In fact, the mission I went on, some French soldiers were calling for them to bomb and the pilot and the weapons officer said, “We can’t bomb, we think there’s a school, we think there might be people in there.”
Praising American military leaders? Raddatz knows how to do that too:
A warrior and a scholar, Petraeus is sometimes jokingly referred to as a water walker, since almost everything he touches seems to turn to gold.
The point the Times drives home is that Raddatz is close to her U.S. sources—she is “a reporter who shows the human side of war,” a point illustrated by the fact that one general likes her work: Raddatz “calls us and invites us over for dinner…. She knows both the soldier’s side and the military family’s side.”
The “human side,” meaning the humans from her own country. As Raddatz says:
“I know how they notify families of the dead,” she said. “No matter how you feel about this war or how we got into it, you have to care about our servicemen. I can’t pretend to be objective when it comes to service or sacrifice.”
You read all of that, and yet the Times comes up with this idea in the very next sentence:
Despite her worldview, Ms. Raddatz is very much a denizen of the Beltway culture, having been married to three well-known Washington figures. Tom Gjelten, her husband of the past 15 years, is a correspondent for National Public Radio; Julius Genachowski, her second husband, was a law school classmate of President Obama and is now chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Her first marriage was to Ben Bradlee Jr., son of the legendary Washington Post editor—a relationship that propelled her into a gossip column dust-up earlier this year.
What exactly in her “worldview” would make her a Beltway outsider? All evidence would seem to point the other way.
You could call Raddatz and her cohorts apologists, but I think “propagandists” would be a more accurate description, wouldn’t you say?
Is she writing for a mainstream media outlet, or for Stars and Stripes?
Is there any discernible difference?
Remarkably reprehensible, but sadly that’s what passes for Beltway “seriousness.”
Whenever Fair attacks an author, you can bet your booty that said author is not playing by the Liberal template.We can also bet she was probably born some where like idaho -where more traditional American values are the norm.She may not of attended an Ivy league school that pounds liberal mantras into minds of mush.She may of worked under a republican president.She may not exhibit those automatic ,knee jerk ,robotic hatreds for said president (and all things American)so beloved by the liberal dominated press pools.I guess she is a real outsider in that sense.To be immediately attacked .She is after all dangerous.A person with a voice who will not shovel the liberal coal to its furnace.At least not automatically.All this you must take into account before reading any review of her work by an ideological outlet like Fair and her bloggers.
The author being “attacked” here is Jennifer Conlin, not Martha Raddatz.
Stick to medicine, doc. Reading for comprehension clearly ain’t your strong suit.
John cut down on the meds .Then tell Doug and Peter Hart ,that the article has nothing to do with Raddatz ,and EVERYTHING to do with Conlin.
@michael e: You wrote “When FAIR attacks an author…” Doug is not FAIR. He just comments here. And the piece is about how Conlin’s review of a fellow journalist is completely superficial and lacking in any critical perspective.
I never said the article had nothing to do with Raddatz. I said the author being attacked is not Raddatz. Read the article and the comments more closely next time.
John
“Martha Raddatz insider war correspondent”has been changed to include Conlin in the title(LOL).A little like an article on Bush where everybody takes shots ending with the disclaimer NOT THAT THIS ARTICLE HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH BUSH.Gimme a break.Really do you think people are that stupid.Read the fair article on her around June 9th.Pretty negative. Conlin again?????
@michael e: Conlin’s name has been in the tag– note: not the title– at the very least since my 2nd response post. You are implying it is a recent amendment. You are pulling this outta yer ass. Don’t flatter yourself: FAIR ain’t about to change its tags just because you think you called them out on something.
Raddatz can be and has been a subject or criticism. And I’ll concede that she’s been criticized here: although little of this criticism was written especially for this particular piece and it mostly takes the form of re-posting and citing to earlier articles. But the author being “attacked” (e.g., “started off bad, only to get much worse”) is Conlin.
You wanna defend Raddatz from criticisms made a while ago and repeated here, fine. But that don’t make her the subject of “attack” in my book. So let’s look at your defense:
Raddatz doesn’t play by the liberal template: what does this even mean? She herself admits she cannot be objective on certain issues. If that’s the normally-acceptable state of the media, then how the heck does the idea of the liberal media have any legs?
Born in Idaho, not Ivy League, and worked for a Republican President: Yep– all people from Idaho who didn’t attend an Ivy League school, and who worked for a Rebulican President are automatically great people worthy of respect and inherent credibility all right. Can’t argue with that logic.
Need I go on?
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I grew up poor and never went to an Ivy League school, yet I was lucky enough not to be so stupid as to believe Bible-thumping preachers or crap-spewing politicians. Sorry, I am from the northeast but not everyone here is wealthy, just as I’m sure not everyone in Idaho is poor. And I’m sure more than a few Ivy League school graduates are from the northwest.
I was a newspaper reporter for a decade and I can spot a sell-out like Raddatz a mile away, and I have yet to see a TV news reporter or anchor – or even most local newspaper reporters – who aren’t. Here’s the deal (and it’s pretty simple): the military protects Raddatz and other like-inded “journalists” when they report stories per their demands, and the won’t even speak to reporters who ask them tough questions that make them uncomfortable or squirm.
For example, the military only embedded high-profile, sell-out corporate media journalists in Iraq and left all others to fend for themselves and literally fend for their own lives. The message was as clear then as it is now: we only protect reporters who report stories OUR way. Not for patriotism or security, but to make sure lies are dutifully repeated without question and stories are spun to make us looks like heros. (Remember Jessica Lynch?)