Food for thought Friday

[reprobayt]

Television and the global news media have changed the perception of combat fatalities as well. CNN would have shown a very different Iwo Jima - bodies rotting on the beach, and probably no coverage of the flag-raising from Mount Suribachi. It is conventional wisdom now to praise the amazing accomplishment of June 6, 1944. But a few ex tempore editorial comments from Geraldo Rivera or Ted Koppel, reporting live from the bloody hedgerows where the Allied advance stalled not far from the D-Day beaches - a situation rife with intelligence failures, poor equipment and complete surprise at German tactics - might have forced a public outcry to withdraw the forces from the Normandy "debacle" before it became a "quagmire."

Someone - perhaps Gens. Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower or George Marshall himself - would have been fired as responsible for sending hundred of poorly protected armored vehicles down the narrow wooded lanes of the Bocage to be torched by well-concealed Germans. Subsequent press conferences over underarmored Sherman tanks would have made the present furor over Humvees in Iraq seem minor.

...excerpt from an editorial in the New York Times.  Your mileage (and opinion) may vary.

Comments

[blyssmouse.livejournal.com]

It is a failing of the modern American that the "information" fed via TV is taken at face value. Of course it's not biased, we say, because we can see it for ourselves. The idea that bias exists in every picture ever taken is not one that's easy to communicate to the unwilling to listen. If we know that then we have to also know that the government is not being open and honest. This places a burden of examination back onto the people which we, as a general lot, don't want since we're happy snuggled safe in our beds.