The Laughing Wolf

The End Of News As We Know It

This was written a few days ago and posted at Winds of Change, but is still valid and timely. Also, it helps me cope with having company. Enjoy it, and the good weather while it lasts.

Yesterday, my noon local TV newscast was broken into by what appeared to be a very grim Tom Brokaw, supported by an equally grim and upset reporter at CENTCOM. The subject of their discussion was the horrifying miscalculation by American soldiers in the fight for Baghdad. The repercussions of this miscalculation were going to be formidable, with implications of a terrible backlash not only in Iraq, but the entire Middle East.

This dire team not only offered their own take on this reprehensible situation, but had gone so far as to seek CENTCOM comment and take on it. What was this major screwup to the war plan, the campaign, and any chance for a lasting Mid East peace?

A soldier, a common soldier, had raised the U.S. flag. The Stars and Stripes had been raised in Baghdad, and its display was the source of the grimness, angst, and dismay at NBC News. Which, upon mature and considered thought and reflection, led me to the question that is the title of this piece: Was Tom Brokaw A Snitch In School?

Other questions also occurred to me. They have cut the last five minutes off the newscast for this? Are they really this desperate for stories? Is this all they can come up with to manufacture a crisis? Are they auditioning for Baghdad Bob’s slot and trying to do his job for him by creating trouble?

The entire situation reminded me not so much of a major news organization covering a major story, but of high school. Of the class snitch running to the assistant headmaster to rat out the latest minor infraction of the rules in self-righteous smugness.

Now NBC has not exactly covered itself in glory with its coverage of the war, so I was not terribly surprised in many respects. For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, I will just say: Peter Arnett. Sedition. Enough Said. Or, maybe not as there is much to critique in their coverage. I turned them off long ago, and watch the local station at noon simply for the weather and local coverage, which are pretty good.

Let’s take a look at this incident that brought out the heavy stares of despair and mature dismay being displayed. It didn’t take too long to figure out what had happened. A Marine had displayed the flag as his vehicle moved into one of the main squares in Baghdad, where a group of Iraqis were trying to take down one of Saddam’s statues. The Marines, being the helpful gentlebeings they are, offered to help. In the course of this, the flag ended up hanging for a few minutes from the statue. The Marine who owned it ended up trading it to one of the now free people in the square for an Iraqi flag, which flew over the statue as it came down. Appropriate. The Iraqis, from all that I saw, took the American flag and proudly displayed it amidst loud cheers.

The real story here is the demonstration in the square, already underway before the troops arrived. The story here is the warm welcome those troops received, one NBC and others had prophesied would not happen. The story here is the mutual help to bring down Saddam, which is a wonderful parallel to the real events taking place – a signal piece of allegory and metaphor. For those confused, the allegory is the picture, the visual image of the statue coming down. The metaphor is the story in words. The real story was the Marines relaxing afterwards with the crowd, not in combat mode but in rest.

Now it may be that this is what NBC had started to report. It may be that the local station cut into a breaking story, and that national did not cut them off. It may be that I will be elected Queen of the May. What was presented was a story that completely missed the point of what was happening; that appeared to deliberately and willfully ignore it to concentrate on a negative non-story.

The story here is that Saddam is now truly irrelevant, and that the people are rising up on their own against him and his regime, and not waiting on Coalition forces to do so. The secondary story is that our forces were welcomed into the situation with open arms and cheers, not shots, rocks, or bombs. The tertiary story is the one that good writers and reporters salivate over, the symbolic joining of forces to topple a tyrant. There is a Pulitzer in there for the person who seizes this opportunity to present this story with all of the delicious levels wrapped up into one well-crafted piece.

There is one other story here as well, and it is not that of a network news piece done badly. It is the story of the death of network news as we know it. Network news as it has been done for more than 30 years. The death of the major media gatekeepers who decide what the story is, create and shape stories for their own purposes, and otherwise determine the coverage given. Between the 24-hour news operations, news sites on the Internet, and Blogs, the news is out there for all to see. All the stories are out there, and the coverage of them is no longer limited to one view or one reporter’s perceptions.

The fundamental change that is underway is going to revolutionize the news and communications in general. In revolutions, the old regimes fall. Yesterday, I did not merely watch Saddam’s statue come down, I watched The Media fall as well. I celebrate the fall.

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