A Journalist's Journalist

March 9, 2005

It's interesting how the major news outlets selectively use the term “journalist.” Jeff Gannon, the Talon News correspondent who caused such a stir by getting a press pass to the White House, was chastised by the snotty elites in the press corp. ‘He's not a journalist,' they said, because his news organization's website contained a link to the Republican Party. Egads! How could this happen? How could this imposter have breached their gilded wall of self-absorbed glitterati? Bias has no place in their world, they protested, even though Dan Rather limped to retirement, wounded by a landmine intended for President Bush that blew up in his face.

 

Then comes Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian “journalist.” Sgrena made headlines recently with her Tom Clancy-like ordeal in Iraq. She got herself kidnapped in Iraq by a bunch of terrorists as she was there trying to make the United States look bad in print. Sgrena works for an Italian newspaper. An Italian communist newspaper. I did a Web search and found dozens of stories on the incident in which she was sprung from her captors. Because the Italians didn't clue the United States military in on her rescue, and because the Italian intelligence agent who rescued her failed to stop at a military checkpoint, the agent was killed in a hail of gunfire and Sgrena was wounded. Sgrena was quick to accuse the United States of “targeting” her, a charge the U.S. dismissed as absurd. If they had targeted her, she'd be dead.

 

But, let's get back to Sgrena's label. That's the real story behind the story. Sgrena works for an openly communist newspaper with overt political intentions and a decidedly left-wing agenda. Before going to work for the newspaper, she worked as an activist and agitator for the communist party. Still, every single news outlet that screamed to high heaven over Jeff Gannon posing as a journalist hailed the incident as an attack against “an Italian journalist.”

 

How the heck is Sgrena, who has much more than a mere link to a political party, labeled a journalist? It's all about perspective. Apparently, the U.S. media, by and large, consider the Republicans a partisan political party but they don't see the communists in the same light. That's a scary commentary on our own so-called journalists. Imagine if Giuliana Sgrena were a Nazi journalist or a Klan journalist. Do you think the mass media would be treating her with kid gloves? The fact is, Sgrena is a propagandist, nothing more.

 

And what do you want to bet, deep down inside, these same “journalists” believe Sgrena's account of the shooting incident over that of the United States military? Their skepticism is fast and furious when it comes to our government but they fail to apply that same doubt when it comes to left-wing ideologues.

 

That's not to say that all journalists are bad. It's just the culture of the American media, especially the national press. Even the world media, for that matter. Let's be honest. Journalists are people, too. Most are just as partisan as ordinary people, if not more so. Humans are partisan by nature. We have passions and opinions and causes. The trick, if you're a true journalist, is to keep your personal beliefs out of your work. That's the mark of a professional journalist.

 

Through the years, I've learned to recognize many of the little signs others overlook. Sure, I approach the government with a healthy degree of skepticism but I reserve the lion's share for the press. They claim to be the watchdogs of the government. Somebody needs to be watching them.