IT'S NOT AN ACADEMIC QUESTION ANYMORE

I'd lay good odds we can all guess which media outlet had the hot tip about where they should set up their cameras if they wanted to watch an American convoy be attacked -- and didn't bother to do anything with the information other than set their cameras up and wait. (Hat tip, Instapundit.) And I'm not thinking about an American outlet.

But it does make this famous hypothetical, and the Jennings/Rather response no longer a purely academic exercise.

Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening's panel, better known than William Westmoreland himself. These were two star TV journalists: Peter Jennings of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace of 6o Minutes and CBS. Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Kosanese government. After much pleading, the North Kosanese had agreed to let Jennings and his news crew into their country, to film behind the lines and even travel with military units. Would Jennings be willing to go? Of course, Jennings replied. Any reporter would-and in real wars reporters from his network often had. But while Jennings and his crew are traveling with a North Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by American and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly cross the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one. What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks. Would he tell his cameramen to "Roll tape!" as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to ambush the Americans? Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds after Ogletree asked this question. "Well, I guess I wouldn't," he finally said. "I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans." Even if it means losing the story? Ogletree asked.

Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. "But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act. That's purely personal, and other reporters might have a different reaction." Immediately Mike Wallace spoke up. "I think some other reporters would have a different reaction," he said, obviously referring to himself. "They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover." "I am astonished, really," at Jennings's answer, Wallace saida moment later. He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: "You're a reporter. Granted you're an American"-at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. "I'm a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you're an American, you would not have covered that story." Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn't Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? "No," Wallace said flatly and immediately. "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!" Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said. "I chickened out." Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached. As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, everyone else in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror. Retired Air Force general Brent Scowcroft, who had been Gerald Ford's national security advisor and would soon serve in the same job for George Bush, said it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. "What's it worth?" he asked Wallace bitterly. "It's worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon." Ogletree turned to Wallace. What about that? Shouldn't the reporter have said something? Wallace gave his most disarming grin, shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms wide in a "Don't ask me!" gesture, and said, "I don't know." He was mugging to the crowd in such a way that he got a big laugh-the first such moment of the discussion. Wallace paused to enjoy the crowd's reaction. Jennings, however, was all business, and was still concerned about the first answer he had given. "I wish I had made another decision," Jennings said, as if asking permission to live the last five minutes over again. "I would like to have made his decision"-that is, Wallace's decision to keep on filming. A few minutes later Ogletree turned to George M. Connell, a Marine colonel in full uniform, jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell looked at the TV stars and said, "I feel utter . . . contempt. " Two days after this hypothetical episode, Connell Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces--and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. The instant that happened he said, they wouldn't be "just journalists" any more. Then they would drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield. "We'll do it!" Connell said. "And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get ... a couple of journalists." The last few words dripped with disgust. Not even Ogletree knew what to say. There was dead silence for several seconds. Then a square-jawed man with neat gray hair and aviator glasses spoke up. It was Newt Gingrich, looking a generation younger and trimmer than when he became Speaker of the House in I995. One thing was clear from this exercise, he said: "The military has done a vastly better 'job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have." That was about the mildest way to put it.

(Thanks to Stephen den Beste for reminding of this exchange.)

Maybe it isn't that academic, after all. The cover story of this month's Harper's, an article that got its author a great deal of positive attention when it first came out, is the story of a man who spent a great deal of time underground with the resistance in Fallujah. I've barely begun it, and I've already been struck by the paradox that confronted this reporter every day he was with these men: he was gaining information that would have been invaluable to our troops, that may have saved American lives. But if he used that information, he would have compromised his ability to finish the story and get possibly more important and more useful information.

What I can't help wondering is whether he allowed himself to be debriefed before he left the country.

There is also the unavoidable fact that if reporters provide information to the military that is actionable intelligence, and that only they would have had, the consequence is more than their sources drying up. The consequence is that the idea that all reporters are neutral will be compromised, perhaps fatally, and every reporter will quickly be treated as a legitimate target on the battlefield.

But this is a war of wills, which means a war of words and, especially, of images. Being tipped to an attack means allowing yourself to be used as a tool of our enemy. At that point you've sacrificed your own neutrality anyway, haven't you?

Comments

[DaninVan]

Perhaps the moral issue is really decided at the time of accepting the opportunity to report from the enemies perspective.

[Alexis Z]

Maybe I am being too simplistic, but being the only reporter on the scene, is it not more than a little possible that a journalist could transfer intelligence to the troops without REPORTING ON IT, thus not compromising his so-called neutrality?

In Jennings' case, you see a man go from the instinctually right, moral thing to say, to one he has been socialized to espouse. It is like a breakdown in mental process, down to his fervent wishing he could 're-do' his answer. Is that what happens when reality hits you head on? You stumble to try and stick to the story, say, 'Oh yeah, me too,' and then pray you could go back in time? Sounds like a psychological disorder to me.

Although the question posed to Jennings is an interesting one, because then the dilemma becomes 'should a reporter risk his life to save troops' (assuming he had to in order to alert them, which may not have been the case in Iraq, since the incident was a roadside bomb). In that case, I think it is safe to say a reporter is not obliged to become a hero, although Jennings' initial answer does garner from me a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of respect. Which he of course lost when he parrotted Wallace.