April 23, 2004

Media Ghouls

The headline is telling in its lack of respect.

Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken

Dead Troops. So many pieces of media fodder.

One doesn’t have to be a partisan to see that this story drives the anti-war sentiment, gives the enemy comfort and seeks to damage the President. It certainly doesn't honor our fallen military. The media is completely clueless about and insensitive to military culture and traditions.

The media doesn't seem to realize that when most military families receive the dread visit their first impulse is not the call the media, they mourn and grieve and bury their dead with respect and tenderness accorded a loved one, not a pawn on the political board.

The media is accomplishing an unintended goal in making "news" from the images of flag-draped coffins, they are making themselves despised.

While the media thinks they've outflanked the Administration, they have once again proved that their interests and political goals are served before ours.

Just as Bush recognized that attending the return of the P-3 crew captured in China would put the focus on him and not the air men and women involved, he knows the media will use images of coffins and military funerals against those being honored. To the media these coffins represent nothing more than a lede story or 30 seconds network air time.

So eager are they to have images of military coffins as a political issue that they do not see the respect accorded nor the reverence given, nor do they recognize the repellent nature of their zeal in pursuing "freedom of information" for which each man or woman gave their life.

No, I will not provide a link to the ghouls who obtained the photos or the Times article, I do not need to see pictures to understand the nature of the sacrifice.

Perhaps the authors of the NYT story should volunteer in one of our National Cemeteries for Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day ceremonies. The Feste family has volunteered for many years; a tradition began by my father to honor his fallen WWII brethren. Walking the rows, placing flags on each gravesite with the smell of freshly cut grass redolent on the crisp morning air, the quiet broken only by the snapping of a distant flag and witnessing the white crosses stretching to the horizon gives one a new perspective on the phrase "Freedom isn't free".

Damn the media, damn them to hell.

UPDATE: COLUMBIA CREW MISTAKENLY IDENTIFIED AS IRAQI WAR CASUALTIES.

The media picks up the story off the website and runs with it.

The AP: A page from the Memory Hole.org's homepage shows photographs of American war dead arriving at Dover Air Force, the nation's largest military mortuary, Thursday, April 22, 2004. The photos are of the Columbia crew.

Rueter's pushed this to my mailbox, the photo is also the Columbia crew. The Washington Post ran the story and photo but posted this correction online:


_____Correction_____

A photograph of an Air Force color guard carrying a flag-draped casket that previously accompanied this article was not a picture of a fallen soldier from Iraq but of an astronaut killed in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle crash. The photograph had been posted on a Web site called the Memory Hole, which had requested the Iraqi pictures from the U.S. military under the Freedom of Information Act. The image that accompanied this article was among several hundred photographs posted on the Memory Hole Web site after they were released by the Air Force.

The dog ate their homework, they had a flat tire, they ran out of gas....it's not their faaauuult!

Posted by feste at April 23, 2004 09:55 AM | TrackBack
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