A Journalist?

Following Jackie Northam's surge report (see previous post), Steve Inskeep gives us a clue as to what is considered journalism at NPR. Mentioning the Iraq Study Group's ideas about reorganizing the Iraqi police forces, Inskeep states, "the national police would move from the Interior Ministry, which is dominated by Shiite Muslims, to the Defense ministry, which is led by a Sunni. To understand what that would mean we called Bing West. He’s a former Assistant Secretary of Defense who now visits Iraq as a journalist..."

If you think Bing West is a journalist, visit his web site. The man is a tireless promoter and salesman of the US Marine Corps - his work is proudly one-sided in its praise of all aspects of the Marine Corps and its missions of projecting US imperial power. That is fine as far as it goes, but it is not journalism. It's propaganda - colorful and intelligently written - but propaganda nonetheless.

Consider this bit of blather from the interview with Inskeep. West is doing his part for the current MSM project of showing how in spite of all the good and noble efforts of the US, the Iraqis are primarily to blame for the mess in Iraq (and like NPR and most of the MSM he seems to be softening up the public for some sort of US assault on Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces):

• "I mean we’re doing all the jaw-boning we possibly can, the issue is when is Maliki going to start doing the things that he knows as the prime minister he has to do – which is reaching out to the Sunnis on one hand and stop sheltering that renegade punk Sadr and his Shiite militia."

For those with time on their hands here is a link to a far more interesting exchange between Bing West and Robert Fisk from a little over a year ago (at the link you can listen to the talk or read the transcript).