No ethics, no morals, no credibility
Regular readers of this journal have been treated to a litany of documented cases where this nation's leftist Old Media shamelessly spin their propaganda and America-bashing in the guise of network news, editorials, and "objective journalism." You know them all by now: CNN, PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, etc.
Although each day more and more Americans truly understand just how insidious and disingenuous Old Media can be, they are still with us and they still laud those that have or wish to do harm to the United States and its citizens.
I stumbled across an article written by Ben Stein, a piece that made my blood boil. Yes, I know ... Stein is a bit neurotic, a bit whiny at times, but he comes from a family of Holocaust survivors, deeply loves our wonderful country, and is just about the fairest, most intelligent, honorable celebrity you will ever run across. I like Ben Stein, and his thoughts that follow illustrate just how low Old Media has sunk:
If you wanted to see the perfect example of the ethical and moral collapse of the Mainstream Media, you could not do better than a long article in the New Yorker magazine of May 23, 2005. The article is entitled, "The Spy Who Loved Us." Written by a teacher at the University of Albany, named Thomas Bass, it's about a man named Pham Xuan An. Now very old, An was - among many other things - a correspondent in Saigon during the Vietnam War for Time magazine. He was apparently considered a particularly brilliant and well-informed correspondent and very well-liked by his colleagues in the Western press corps during the war.
"... He was also a Communist spy, working for the North Vietnamese, informing them of what he knew about American military plans, troop movements, political agendas ..."
When the war ended, An volunteered to go to the U.S. and continue spying for the Communists. The offer was denied and he lives quietly in Ho Chi Minh City, where, among other pets, he keeps fighting cocks -- a practice generally considered barbaric in the circles of New Yorker readers, but another sign of his cuteness to Professor Bass. In fact, the whole article is about how cute and smart and clever and brave a guy An is. A lovable, brilliant, brave man who sent Americans and innocent civilians to their deaths. Bass even explains that almost all of An's former colleagues in the Western press still love the guy after learning he was a spy for America's enemy in the Vietnam War. They even gave money to bring him here for an auld lang syne visit not long ago.
In this article, which I would guess to be about 8,000 words or more, there is not one hint, not one whisper, of sympathy for the American soldiers who fought and died or were maimed in Vietnam. Not one sliver of anger at a man who took American money and helped kill Americans. Not a word about the mass murder of civilians during Tet.
Want to know what those Western journalists now say about An? Ed Lasky has some examples, including these:
1. Bass notes that almost all the journalists who worked with Pham are united in their support of him. Peter Arnett praises him as a "bold guy". Frank McCulloch, who was the head of the Time Asia bureau when he hired Pham said he was "absolutely not" angry when he learned of Pham's spying and said, "It's his land, I thought. If the situation were reversed, I would have done the same thing."
2. McCulloch, says Bass, remembers Pham with "tremendous fondness and respect" and says it was a great pleasure to raise thirty-two thousand dollars to send Pham's son to journalism (!) school in America.
We have become so used to this sort of thing that it no longer shocks. But use the obvious analogy and ask whether these journalists would have had the same reaction. Suppose An had been one of our World War II opponents, that he had worked for Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany, rather than Communist North Vietnam. Would these journalists have at least mixed feelings about him? Would Professor Bass? I hope so.
There you have it. Ben Stein is a gentleman and did not write what he truly must have felt when he read the original article. B2 never claimed to be a gentleman. Bass and his ilk are the lowest forms of scum, filth that should be held accountable for first abetting and then applauding the murder of so many of America's young men and women.