Bad News, Too Often Traveling First Class?

[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz]
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently started to criticize press coverage of the war in Iraq, saying it is too negative. Privately, at least, some journalists say Rumsfeld has a point. But there is no shortage of critics. David Halberstam, the author and former Vietnam correspondent whose reporting led John F. Kennedy to demand that the New York Times recall him, says Rumsfeld is starting to resemble that era's Pentagon chief, Robert McNamara. "When the policy doesn't work, shoot the messenger," Halberstam says. "When the policy doesn't work or is seriously flawed, you go after the press, and certainly that happened in Vietnam. What was particularly odious is that if we were writing pessimistically, they'd say we were insulting the soldiers of an ally and insulting the U.S. military. As the people in the field were suppressed, they turned to the journalists, and we became their outlets." Michael Ware, Time's Baghdad correspondent, calls Secretary Rumsfeld's remarks administration spin. "It is so far from the truth on the ground it's almost indescribable," he says. "The defining quality of the Iraq story is the horror. It is a war, and it is awful, and bloody, and vicious, and brutal on all sides. To devote your energies to making that day's story the opening of a health clinic is almost irresponsible."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/11/AR2005121101228.html
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