Media (Un)Ethics

The media loves to destroy careers and damage peoples' lives. if someone is unfortunate enough to be in the media spotlight due to their iridescent talents, that person can count on being treated like the subject of the Truman Show. Especially if something in that microscopically-studied life should happen to occur that promises lots of free publicity for the jackals of the Press.

Tiger Woods is one of these unfortunates. The man is a supremely skilled golfer. He is athletic, rich, attractive to the fair sex and seemingly lives the Perfect Life. But he is also an intensely private person off the golf course. He doesn't appear on frothy 'celebrity' shows. He doesn't appreciate fake topless shots of his wife. And he certainly doesn't enjoy the media intruding into what he does off the golf course. All of which stands should be uncontroversial. But the media can't let it go. In a world populated by self-serving trash like TMZ and Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr (who calls himself Perez Hilton), if the media cannot catch a celebrity in an embarrassing, headline-provoking scandal, they are perfectly prepared to create it out of whole cloth.

Such is the case here. The undisputed facts are these:

1. The National Enquirer magazine published a story claiming Mr. Woods had an affair with a woman.


2. Both Woods and the woman (Rachel Uchitel, 34) promptly denied the report.


3. Mr. Woods and his wife may have had an argument, possibly caused by the Enquirer's story. No physical force has been reported to have been involved.


4. Mr. Woods left the house at a very early hour and was involved in a minor automobile accident.


5. Mrs. Woods assisted in rescuing her husband, who suffered minor injuries.

As far as I am aware, no laws were broken by either Mr. or Mrs. Woods. However, the media, having created the situation that caused the problem, are now in full-throated roar demanding that Mr. Woods somehow owes them an explanation.

Er, how to put this in language our logically- and ethically-challenged media will understand? NO. Tiger Woods owes the the press nothing at all. In addition, unless some evidence emerges that he broke the law in some manner, neither does he owe the police an explanation. Jason Whitlock, one of the very few members of the press who has both respect for others' privacy and common sense (he was virtually the only member of the national media to get the Duke Rape Hoax right), put it best in his column this morning, writing,

The media members/outlets asserting Tiger Woods owes the public and the Florida Highway Patrol an explanation for a fender-bender and his wife's jaws-of-9-iron rescue owe America an explanation for their self-serving jealousy and obvious stupidity.
...

The price of fame and wealth should not be the sacrifice of marital privacy. Tiger Woods plays golf for our enjoyment. He didn't marry Elin Nordegren for our entertainment.

Jason Whitlock gets it. Why don't the rest of America's supposedly 'professional' press corps? The media does not have a right to invade the privacy of people just because their professions bring them into the public eye.

America's media has a lot of problems, from their abject failure to actually display any professional objectivity (11 'fact-checkers' for Sarah Palin's book, zero for Barack Obama's or Joe Biden's)to their complete failure to accurately inform the American public about many important stories currently ongoing (ACORN's corruption, the University of East Anglia's emails, etc.). But while they don't seem to have enough time to actually deal with actual issues of real importance to most Americans, they do have enough time to descend on a professional athlete who has done nothing wrong and try to wreck his life. For shame!

Is Major Hasan a Traitor?

Austin Bay makes a strong case in his StrategyPage column today that the answer may be yes. Writes Bay,

One word aptly describes Ft. Hood mass murderer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan: traitor.

Traitor is a tough word. It doesn't smudge and squish. "Traitor" draws a hard line, one that sharply divides essential life-determining values and marks a defining personal choice between the profound and the profane.

Treason is one of the few crimes specifically defined in the text of the United States Constitution. As defined in Article Three, Section Three,

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Well, then. Major Hasan was a voluntary member of the United States Army, sworn to protect the United States and furthermore, he was a member of the Army Medical Corps, sworn to serve his fellow soldiers. He voluntarily swore two oaths to that effect. Yet he opened fire on his unarmed fellow soldiers, on a military base on his country's soil. He did not take the honorable course of resigning and seeking to fight as a part of our enemies' forces, but instead hid behind his rank and shot down his fellow soldiers when they could not defend themselves. I would say that this meets the characterization of 'levying war' as well as 'adhering to their enemies'. Taken together, this is a pretty clear picture of a traitor. Colonel Bay compares Hasan with Benedict Arnold and I believe that to be a fair analogy but I would classify Hasan's acts as even more despicable than Arnold's.

Bay also takes to task journalists and activists like Joe Klein and the partisan hacks at MoveOn.org for abusing the word treason - a word that in some cases (ie. Eric Lichtblau and James Risen) actually applies better to those same abusers. Bay says of these contemptible members of the chattering class,

Self-styled mainstream journalists with no regard for the awful moral weight and terrible consequences of the actual act of sedition heedlessly employ the accusation as a word weapon to thwart discomfiting political criticism. For example, Time Magazine's Joe Klein wrote this past Oct. 23 that "some of" what Fox News presents ("peddles" was Klein's verb) "borders on sedition."

Klein's rash innuendo (so indicative of people who live in a relatively safe world protected by cops and soldiers) is lightweight prostitution compared to the thoroughly dirty work of the hard left propagandists at MoveOn.org, who all but called Gen. David Petraeus a traitor.

This is unfortunately true. Many members of the left like to throw around words like this in an attempt to silence their political opponents. However, treason has a deeper meaning - simply disagreeing with a President's policies, and pointing out the flaws and problems with those policies, is not treason. That is dissent, and is the lifeblood of a free country. The Left, however, prefers to silence their adversaries than to hold an open debate. I would suggest that my readers, such as they may be, might want to take note of that tendency. Republicans and conservatives are not known for silencing debate - quite the contrary. It is the Left who wishes to shut down open discourse, whether by the Orwellian 'Fairness Doctrine' or by cruder threats, such as frivolous lawsuits or even using their SEIU shock troops.

Did Major Nidal Malik Hasan commit treason? Based on the available evidence the answer appears to be a resounding yes. I fully support a full investigation in a military courts martial. However, should the resulting judgment agree with this assessment, we can only hope that a military overcome with dangerous political correctness can and will take the necessary steps to execute him for actions against the men and women he was sworn to protect and serve.

Reporter Writes False Story- Actually Apologizes

In the wake of the infamous (and illegal) antics of the New England Patriots, having admitted they repeatedly and blatantly broke the rules and cheated during their Super Bowl run of the early 21st century, a story appeared in the Boston Herald newspaper that the Patriots had taped the St. Louis Rams' walkthrough prior to beating the heavily favored Rams in the 2001 Super Bowl.

Since the Patriots are admitted cheaters, this was not a stretch of the imagination, especially since a member of the Patriots' video staff- one who illegally taped other team- was setting up while the Rams were walking through their game plan. However, the story has not been corroborated by anyone, and the member of the Patriots' staff who did most of the illegal taping told the NFL commissioner that he had no knowledge of anyone doing said taping, and that he certainly did not. Following this, the Herald and its reporter, one John Tomase, have apologized- and on the front page, no less. Tomase wrote on the Herald's website today

"First and foremost, this is about a writer breaking one of the cardinal rules of journalism. I failed to keep challenging what I had been told," wrote John Tomase in Friday's editions of the newspaper.

Tomase explained what led up to the publication of the Feb. 2 story, which appeared one day before the Patriots' 17-14 Super Bowl loss to the New York Giants. The Herald on Wednesday apologized for the story, after former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh told NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell that he did not tape the walkthrough and did not know of anyone who had.

This is a rare occurrence in the media. The normal process is for some organ of the media to make blazing accusations on their front page, and then publish the retraction- if in fact they actually retract, which again is extremely rare- on the back page. The New York Times is particularly egregious in this regard, writing stories that impugn public figures' honor on an almost daily basis, yet never actually admitting that there is no truth to these allegations. Case in point is the Times' heinous pursuit of the Duke lacrosse students, assigning biased and incompetent reporter Duff Wilson to write a story virtually every point of which has been proven wrong- yet the paper has never apologized.

I applaud Mr. Tomase and the Herald both for the intestinal fortitude to admit they got the facts wrong and for their willingness to put that admission on the front page. Of course, I do have a suspicion that the fact that the patriots are owned by a powerful, very rich man who employs lots of good lawyers (and that he is not a member of that eeeevil Bush Administration- remember the breathless press coverage of the supposed illegal events in the Plame case?) might have had something to do with their admission of wrongdoing). In any event, i congratulate them for doing the right thing. When will the rest of the media being following their example? Too often the media is willing to publish allegations without evidence, yet they will not put the exoneration in an equally prominent place? Remember Richard Jewell, the security guard whose reputation was so badly damaged by the media? Or how about Dr. William Hatfill, the media-determined guilty party in the anthrax cases? I haven't noticed any apologies from the media who tried so hard to wreck his life.

In all cases, the media should be prepared to grant the Constitution's requirement of 'innocent until proven guilty'. And if the subject of the media coverage is indeed innocent, then the media have a responsibility to print that exoneration in the same place that they printed the initial allegations. But that would actually require professional ethics and an ability to be objective- something that the US media appears to lack. Cross-posted on NewsBusters.

CORRECTION: I mistakenly wrote Dr. Hatfill's name as William. It is actually Steven. I apologize for the mistake. Thanks to my commenter 'Anonymous' for catching the mistake.