Geez Jim! I wanted to have some free time tonight! Let the bottom posting begin!

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Correspondents tend to be college-educated. Colleges are known to be havens for liberal thinking, so correspondents must then be disproportionately liberal.


This is bordering on elitist territory by assuming that most college educated peoples are of a liberal mindset so, in turn, most conservatives must be farm raised, bible thumping, simpletons who are too scared by new things to be open minded to a better, progressive utopia. But I'll assume this wasn't your point... While colleges are indeed havens for hacky sacks, hemp beaded necklaces and protest movements du jour, I think a lot of this begins and ends in that environment. While most people don't graduate to later become Republicans (it's probably split), most do in fact go on to lead pretty conservative lives, even if they don't vote that way.

Journalism professors, on the other hand, do tend to be quite liberal. I know first hand how we had to read only liberal books on the evils of consumerism and the blessings of large government in order to pass a class (and write only praising reviews to get a good grade). I thank God that I was repulsed by the requirement to write at a 5th grade reading level. This moved me out of broadcast journalism.

The real problem IMO is that most journalists are driven by the desire to "change the world" which is not what journalism is about. If anything, that's what editorials are for. But, growing up in the age of Watergate and the McCarthyism, there is a mold for these budding journalists to fit into... Unfortunately, journalists/activists don't get the luxury of graduating to a better life. Instead, they get hired by the likes of Arthur O. Sulzberger.

I seriously doubt you'll be motivated to write and complain about a bunch of journalists

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Quote: Off the top of my head, Cronkite has opposed the Iraq war because it was a military action by the US without UN approval,

Seems like one of many good reasons.


UN approval is nice (although it wasn't enough for Kerry in the Persian Gulf War), but shouldn't be a requirement for the United States or any country to protect itself. Especially when there was no way in hell that France, Russia, Germany or China were going to ever support such action (and France promised to veto it). What were we to do? Out bid Saddam's bribes?

If not having UN approval is "one of many reasons" to oppose something, I don't how this can be considered anything but a global test.

But again, we are debating issues that we'll never agree on. The real point was that a journalist's viewpoint should not enter into his job. Whether it be politics, sports or the purple section of USA Today, a journalists job is to tell the public what has happened.

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My memory, though, is that there was more of a sense amond the world at large after Bosnian genocide that it was necessary to do *something*, and that Clinton would have been criticized no matter what path was pursued.


The world at large can have whatever sense they want. The point is that Russia vowed to veto any UN action in Bosnia so the US acted unilaterally. Clinton was smart enough to know that the UN was and is useless except when it comes to issuing pointless resolutions. (Just look at how many humanitarian disasters have happened as the UN sat idly by.) Some ground troops would have been nice, and it would have been nice to let our pilots fly lower to avoid civilian deaths, but Clinton did the right thing.

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Who would have criticized Bush for *not* invading Iraq?


Once Saddam succeeded in lifting sanctions and reconstituting his weapons programs, the same people that point the finger at Bush for letting 9/11 happen, except that this time, they would have a valid argument. As Churchill said, World War II could have been avoided, and hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved if the world confronted the fascist regimes in Europe before country after country began to fall under their control. But, it was the USA's isolationist movement, Britain's appeasement and France's head in the sand that let World War II happen. Little did we know that France having its head in the sand was better than where their head is now.

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Presently, we have a sitting President who *may* have been wirelessly prompted through a Presidential debate, but the only journalists with the temerity to ask what that bulge was live within the confines of a comic strip. That's not good.


This is tin-foil hat stuff. Was he wearing earmuffs or something to cover his ears so that we couldn't see an IFB sitting in there? The reason that nobody is bringing it up, is because only the "Bush attacked Afghanistan for an oil line!" people are buying into this. This is the equivalent of the "vast Right wing conspiracy" people that think Clinton was behind killing scores of people. If journalists covered this, it wouldn't be journalism, it'd be one of those shows where they talk about the Loch Ness Monster on The Learning Channel.

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Tim Russert *is* one of those college-educated liberals, I think. What does he do that is unfair?


I said in my post that Russert was a liberal and I didn't care. He does his job. He respects the people he interviews and respects his position as the host of one of the longest running political shows in the US. I have deep respect for him. It's impossible to expect any reporter to have "no views" at all. The problem only shows up when those views are reflected in the reporting. He does slip up from time to time on the Today show, but that's my fault for tuning in!

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To my amazement, there are still people who think it *was* winnable, and blame Cronkite, Fonda and others for our defeat. You?


Who can ever know? I was born in 1975, so I was too preoccupied with um.. I don't remember. I do know that the Vietnamese say that the Anti-War movement in the US is what gave them faith to keep fighting. At that point, they knew they didn't have to win strategically. All they had to do was cause enough US casualties to sway public opinion. The Vietnamese even have John Kerry and Jane Fonda in their museum . I sure as hell think that we could have won, had the war been fought differently from Day One, but that's all hindsight. Communism didn't spread throughout South East Asia after that, but anyone who claims to know whether that was or was not because Vietnam stopped that tide is talking out of their ass.

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Oh, and Edward R. Murrow was, I'm pretty certain, a liberal, thank goodness.


But that's not what made him a great reporter.

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McGovern spells out what liberalism has accomplished. What has conservatism gotten us?


That's a different era my friend. John Kennedy was a democrat but supported preemptive action and lower taxes. I think he'd crap if he saw that Howard Dean represents his party more than he does today. Conservatism, by nature, is all that we hold sacred in this great nation of ours. That's why we want to conserve it. Winning the Cold War and allowing millions of people to live in freedom comes to mind.

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Did Cronkite keep an office at CBS?


I think he did, I don't really care enough to look it up. I remember there being some minor power struggle at some point where Rather didn't want Cronkite to report on some story, but it seemed to silly for me to bother reading.

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Does anybody in the current Iraq command structure respect Dill O'Reilly? Oh, he's not a journalist. Or is he?


I think they do in spades. Because he supports and respects them. He honors their service and doesn't view them as war criminals in waiting. His ratings are doing pretty well too. But no, he is not a journalist. He is a political commentator who editorializes current events. I know that he leans Right of center, but he tells you that. In contrast, the Katies, Dans and Peters of the world pretend to be objective.

Back to older stuff...

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NPR comsymp Daniel Schorr had an interesting off-the-cuff spin this AM -- that any mention of "Iraq" helps Kerry while any mention of "terrorism" helps Bush. I don't know.


I would agree with him at first glance, but then that would have put Bush's numbers at 5% by now if it were true (considering how often Iraq is in the news). Kerry's position on Iraq changes so often, he's better off not having to talk about it.

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Knowledge of unsecured or porrly secured dumps from which insurgents could lift large quantities of explosives, ammo, RPGs were in the news early on in the "post-war" war, weren't they?


You misspelled poorly and around (way earlier) btw. I've been waiting like.. two years to do that.

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I am not sure why this one is getting so much attention other than the IAEA seals.


Because someone from the UN leaked that memo, about an 18 month old story, due to the election being a week away. That, and Kerry has mentioned it in every speech.

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A small voice in my head says "Do I want to spend the next four years listening to Republicans yell 'That Flipflopper!'" and a very tiny part of me wants to say "George, you want it? You can have it."


I'm glad that you are coming to terms with Bush's inevitable victory already. But the thing to remember is that if Bush wins, as Americans, each and everyone of us is a winner.
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Brad B.