-Caveat Lector-
Kill Your TV
"Taylor, John (JH)" wrote:
>
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> Updated 8/26/99 7:20 PM
>
> "THERE ARE TEARS IN MY EYES."
> CNN has a new program called Dying to Tell the Story. It's a show dedicated
> to the journalists who gave or risked their lives to get the story out. I
> haven't seen it, but they are running ads for it pretty steadily. You can
> get the feel for what they're doing right away. They are laying another
> layer of treacle and hagiography on the press corps. Protectors of the first
> amendment who are willing to give their lives in defense of your right to
> know, or some other comic book drivel. CNN is part of that whole Freedom
> Forum cult which is trying to make journalism some sort of secular
> priesthood.
>
> Go out to the Freedom Forum's "Newseum" in Arlington, Virginia and you'll
> see a lot of very interesting stuff about the press - old headlines, big TVs
> (gotta love really big TVs) and some great photography - but you will also
> see a celebration of journalists as a special caste. The press is so
> self-serving that we do not need to make these people martyrs to a great
> cause. My guess is that more Peace Corps volunteers have died digging wells
> than journalists "dying to tell the story."
>
> Since I haven't seen the program yet, I don't want to jump the gun. But, as
> I say, I have seen the commercial. There are some powerful images in it.
> There's a shot of a man on fire. I don't know the back story, but one
> wonders if it reminded anyone else of the cameramen who filmed a burning man
> until they were sure they got the shot before they put him out.
>
> But the really disturbing image is of Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a man.
> Everybody has seen this picture or the film of the incident. A cruel and
> angry South Vietnamese General executes what appears to be a defenseless
> Vietcong prisoner. Eddie Williams, The AP photographer who snapped the
> photo, earned a Pulitzer Prize for the picture. That picture helped
> galvanize the anti-war effort in the United States. Hubert Humphrey, at the
> time the photo was taken, was on the verge of challenging President Johnson
> for the Democratic nomination for president. The photo (and subsequent NBC
> film) helped stir sentiment to the point that Johnson announced he would not
> seek a second term only two months later. It is one of the most powerful
> icons for everything that was supposedly wrong with that war. It is
> precisely the sort of professional coup that a reporter who's "Dying to Tell
> the Story" dreams of getting.
>
> Except Eddie Adams wishes he never took the picture.
>
> After the photo was seen around the world, the AP assigned Williams to hang
> out with General Loan. He discovered that Loan was a beloved hero in
> Vietnam, to his troops and the citizens. "He was fighting our war, not their
> war, our war, and every - all the blame is on this guy," Williams told NPR
> (in what may have been the most surprisingly courageous NPR interview I've
> ever heard). Williams learned that Loan fought for the construction of
> hospitals in South Vietnam and unlike the popular myths, demonstrated the
> fact that at least some South Vietnamese soldiers really did want to fight
> for their country and way of life.
>
> Just moments before that photo had been taken, several of his men had been
> gunned down. One of his soldiers had been at home, along with the man's wife
> and children. The Vietcong had attacked during the holiday of Tet, which had
> been agreed upon as a time for a truce. As it turned out, many of the
> victims of the NC and North Vietnamese were defenseless. Some three thousand
> of them were discovered in a mass grave outside of Hue after the Americans
> reoccupied the area. The surprise invasion, turned out to be a military
> disaster for the Vietcong, but a huge strategic victory because of its
> effect on American resolve.
>
> But at the time, all of this was irrelevant to people like Loan. It was an
> ugly, shocking assault. The execution of the prisoner was a reprisal. It was
> an ugly thing to be sure, but wars, civil wars especially, are profoundly
> ugly things.
>
> Williams wrote in Time magazine, "The general killed the Viet Cong; I
> killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful
> weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even
> without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't
> say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place
> on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away
> one, two or three American soldiers?'"
>
> The picture that Williams took, the picture that CNN thinks is such an
> atrocious and ignoble deed, ruined Loan's life. More to the point, it didn't
> expand on "our right to know." It didn't answer questions, or give us the
> story. It deceived. It gave no context. It confirmed the biases of the
> anti-war journalists, and they used it to further their agenda.
>
> Loan fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon for the US. He eventually moved
> to Burke, Virginia. He tried to open a restaurant in Northern Virginia, but
> when the identity of its owner became known, it closed down. Protestors
> circled the establishment venting their fashionable, safe, outrage.
>
> The two men stayed in touch, and Williams tried to apologize many times.
>
> "He was very sick, you know, he had cancer for a while," he told NPR. "And
> I talked to him on the phone and I wanted to try to do something, explaining
> everything and how the photograph destroyed his life and he just wanted to
> try to forget it. He said let it go. And I just didn't want him to go out
> this way."
>
> General Loan died a year and a month ago. He left a wife and five kids.
> Most of the obituaries were, like the photograph that ruined his life, two
> dimensional and unforgiving. Williams sent flowers with a card that read,
> "I'm sorry. There are tears in my eyes."
>
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DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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