Defense Attorneys Dominate MSM
The LATimes has a major story today on the April 9, 2004 insurgent ambush on an Army-escorted, Halliburton-driven oil truck convoy, in which two soldiers died and one is missing, and many Halliburton employees were killed, injured or kidnapped. Of the 43 men on the convoy, 25 were killed or injured.
The story lays out a long, unchallenged recitation of what went wrong. It appears to be a story of mistakes, errors in judgment and bullheadedness that combined to lead to disaster, another example of chaos theory overtaking planning in the field of war.
Or is it? Buried deep in the next-to-the-last paragraph is this:
Lawsuit leaks inevitably lead to biased stories because the defendants can't comment on lawsuits they haven't seen, and lazy reporters just go with the allegations as presented without much, or any, independent investigative reporting.
This story is typical. The allegations against Halliburton and the Defense Department are presented as if they were reportorial investigation; they are not. They were ginned up with an unknown and uncredible amount of work by a legal team seeking big bucks. They were not disclosed as such by reporter T. Christian Miller or his editors, which to my mind is unethical and sloppy.
Miller should have started his allegations by saying, "In a lawsuit filed by attorneys for the family of one of the killed truckers, who are seeking $XX million in damages, it was alleged that...." But he didn't, and his editors didn't make make him.
This sloppiness and bias comes from the same MSM who, in its NYTimes mode, blasts the Bush administration for sending out well-identified video news releases that the media sometimes doesn't attribute well. Whose problem is it? The lawyers'? The Administration's? No. The it's the media's problem, and it hurts the public.
The story lays out a long, unchallenged recitation of what went wrong. It appears to be a story of mistakes, errors in judgment and bullheadedness that combined to lead to disaster, another example of chaos theory overtaking planning in the field of war.
Or is it? Buried deep in the next-to-the-last paragraph is this:
The family of driver Tony D. Johnson, 47, of Riverside, plans to file a lawsuit in state court Monday accusing Halliburton of negligence in his death. It is the first of several lawsuits expected in connection with the case.And it comes clear. This is another of the thousands of stories filed every year because criminal defense lawyers leak lawsuits to reporters a day or two before they're filed. The stories gets splashed all over page one and lead the evening news ... but they present just one side of the story. And isn't the media is supposed to be objective?
Lawsuit leaks inevitably lead to biased stories because the defendants can't comment on lawsuits they haven't seen, and lazy reporters just go with the allegations as presented without much, or any, independent investigative reporting.
This story is typical. The allegations against Halliburton and the Defense Department are presented as if they were reportorial investigation; they are not. They were ginned up with an unknown and uncredible amount of work by a legal team seeking big bucks. They were not disclosed as such by reporter T. Christian Miller or his editors, which to my mind is unethical and sloppy.
Miller should have started his allegations by saying, "In a lawsuit filed by attorneys for the family of one of the killed truckers, who are seeking $XX million in damages, it was alleged that...." But he didn't, and his editors didn't make make him.
This sloppiness and bias comes from the same MSM who, in its NYTimes mode, blasts the Bush administration for sending out well-identified video news releases that the media sometimes doesn't attribute well. Whose problem is it? The lawyers'? The Administration's? No. The it's the media's problem, and it hurts the public.
posted by Laer at 12:21 PM
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