The Ombudsgod has a report on a speech by NBC News correspondent Ashleigh Banfield, criticizing cable news war coverage:
“We didn’t see what happen when Marines fired M-16s,” Banfield said during a Landon lecture appearance today at Kansas State University. “We didn’t see what happened after mortars landed, only the puff of smoke. There were horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism? Or was this coverage?”
On the other hand, she said, many U.S. television viewers were treated to a non-stop flow of images presented by “cable news operators who wrap themselves in the American flag and go after a certain target demographic.”
“It was a grand and glorious picture that had a lot of people watching,” Banfield said, “and a lot of advertisers excited about cable TV news. But it wasn’t journalism, because I’m not sure Americans are hesitant to do this again — to fight another war, because it looked to them like a courageous and terrific endeavor.”
Um, doesn’t Banfield work for one of those cable networks? And didn’t the network’s point man for the coverage of Iraq from the front give his life to bring that coverage into America’s living rooms? I mean, leave aside the substance; this is just tacky, and doubly tacky coming from an MSNBC darling who got shoved aside as the war coverage heated up. Can you say, “sour grapes?”