July 9th, 2008 • Quill Archives
The Pentagon’s handmaidens
On April 20, 2003, CNN Chief News Executive Eason Jordan shed light on the network’s selection of military analysts it had hired to interpret combat developments in the Iraq war. He told Howard Kurtz, host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources”: I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance, at CNN, here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war, and we got a big thumbs-up on all of them.
November 11th, 2003 • Quill Archives
Rescuing Private Lynch – and rescuing journalism pt. 1
The heroic Jessica Lynch Story – her down-to-the-last-bullet gun battle before being captured and her rescuers’ daring dash to freedom in a hail of gunfire – has been shot down more effectively than the Iraqi army. The next stage of the story’s natural evolution is upon us: The mediaplex is moving on from the typically confusing ambiguity of news coverage to the heart-stirring simplicity of a primetime biopic, with NBC scheduled to air a two-hour special, “Saving Jessica Lynch,” this month.
November 11th, 2003 • Quill Archives
Rescuing Private Lynch – and rescuing journalism pt.2
Pt.2….. Some news organizations added their own fresh misinformation, either unattributed or based on the thinnest of speculation. New York Daily News reporter Maki Becker, for instance, in an early story with no dateline, quoted Amy Waters Yarsinske, “an ex-Navy intelligence officer and an expert on POW treatment,” pontificating on the cause of Lynch’s injuries, which she apparently hadn’t seen.
