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On the Tank Thing
By Charlie
This has gotten around the blogosphere by now, W. Thomas Smith, Jr., a milblogger at National Review Online’s The Tank, may have misrepresented some reporting from Lebanon.
I read NRO, and I have read Smith’s writings in the past. The guy’s definitely got talent, and knows how to speak the military language –he should, he’s a Marine. I’m not going to get into the weeds on what he actually wrote, I haven’t been following the story closely enough. Instead I wanted to point out some of the problems with news reporting versus opinion journalism versus blogging. I know a little about all of those, I was the Editor-in-Chief of my college newspaper, and I am well versed in the “firewall” between news (fact) and opinion (opinion). It is pretty straight forward: keep your opinions out of your news stories.
However, blogging is simply writing stuff and posting it to the web for interested parties to read. Calling blogs “journalism” is a misnomer –some bloggers are journalists- but I’m not one of them. On to milblogging, I did not blog much while I was deployed. I had several reasons: OPSEC, no time, no access, etc. One of the problems that I realized blogging from theatre would have posed is that it would have presented a perspective that would have been so compartmentalized that if it were not viewed in context, it would not make any sense.
I realize that there is a market for good blogging from theatre (with Michael Yon as my witness), but blogging does come with some problems. One of the phrases I became familiar with was “the first report is always wrong.” Working with incomplete information in an isolated environment leads to errors and inaccuracies.
“You can have your own opinion, but you can’t have your own facts”
That being said, the line between journalism and blogging has been blurred. The important thing to go forward here with is to try to be as accurate as possible when relaying facts on a blog (whether blogging or writing a journalistic piece). Differences in opinion can be dealt with in the “comments” section.
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Comments
I think, Malkin's (characteristically) hysterical analysis aside, his error wasn't all that severe. Every time you report on a group of people larger than 10, it's an estimate and it is common journalistic practice to report it as simple fact. And from the number of times I've had to ask "you say you're up on sensitive items, did you personally touch them?" I think it's an unremarkable error to report an estimate or assumption as fact.
And while I understand that a lot of people are inclined to draw and quarter the guy to prove that conservatives police their own better than liberals do, nothing we do will satisfy the left.
So what will satisfy us? Clearly, he's admitted to poor reporting. And he's done so in a timely manner. And neither he nor NRO have a history of bad journalism.
If that's not good enough, we're going to wind up throwing conservatives under the bus every time they mess up. And we will lose a lot of good people because of it.
scooby - That was my take of Michelle Malkin's piece as well: hysterical. Based on that, others are running with it and calling for W. Thomas Smith, Jr. to be fired. I have seen this in quite a few places. Comparing him to Scott Thomas Beauchamp, falling him a "fabulist", etc.
I find this completely irresponsible.
Not to mention, as you stated, I see this as the right side of the blogosphere simply wanting to show how holier than thou they are as compared to the Left.
If they are not careful, they are going to end up leaving this open for the left to not just criticize W. Thomas Smith Jr's errors, but all of his reporting from Lebanon. And beyond that, they will attack ALL milbloggers and embedded bloggers, thus discrediting the entire milblogosphere.
It's disgusting to me how the right side of the blogosphere doesn't seem to care to link to any miblogs until something like this happens. Other than that, they don't have any time to direct their readers to the milblogs for proper military analysis and war reporting. And now this happens and Michelle Malkin flies off the handle, leading others to fly off the handle and call for Mr. Smith, Jr.'s scalp.
Utterly ridiculous.
I meant to also say that the Left will use this to completely discredit what any milblog embed has to say about Hezb'Allah's actions in Lebanon.
The Left does not want to admit that Lebanon is controlled by Hezb'Allah and now with the right throwing W. Thomas Smith, Jr. under the bus and thus discrediting everything he has reported from there, it hurts to get the facts out of the dangerous situation there.
From my reading of his explanation and his past reports that I read, it seems to make sense. He was relying on what he saw and his sources to give his opinion. I didn't see anyone link to his reporting, yet now they are all crucifying him.
Also, people need to find out if the people criticizing W. Thomas Smith Jr. are sympathetic to Hezb'Allah and Syria and are working to undermine the reporting coming out of Lebanon.
I have followed Smith's reporting from the Middle East for some time. This irresponsible attach on him has diminished his ability to report on Lebanon. Check out
http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/12/04/to-quick-to-pile-on-w-thomas-s/index.html
to see the type of reporting we are missing.
I posted the wrong link,
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/global.php?id=1385875
is where you need to read Smith's article
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Ouch. Damn. This one hurts.