Liberal Talk Radio

Dexter Filkins has a great appreciation of David Halberstam, who Tom posted about on Monday. In some ways, Filkins has inheritied Halberstam’s role, being one of the few unembedded reporters during the Iraq War. (If you haven’t read Filkins’ much-lauded reporting from the Battle of Fallujah in 2004, do yourself a favor…)

Filkins notes that Vietnam was the first war in which the press was openly critical of the administration, and Halberstam got under the skin of JFK and LBJ for precisely that reason:

That skepticism, in the American press, was new. “The press at the time, and by that I mean the editors, were living in the shadow of World War II,” [UPI reporter Neil] Sheehan said in an interview. “The senior military and the senior diplomats had enormous credibility with the news media. If General Patton gave you a briefing on what he was going to do to the Germans — and he always brought the press with him, because he thought it was important — you could expect a pretty straightforward account.”

This is an interesting compliment to the Bill Moyers show I commented on last night. You could argue that, in the case of the Iraq war, the American press was simply reverting to its traditional, pre-Vietnam posture of cheerleader and stenographer. In other words, challenging a wartime government is the exception, rather than the rule.

That said, America has traditionally fought defensive wars, not wars that served to justify some dubious political theory (be it “domino theory” or “neoconservatism”). When you’re fighting to defend yourself, you have a clearer moral standing to begin with, which makes it easier for the press to, in some real objective sense, take you at your word.