Freedom of the Press
I must confess that I read the feature pages of newspapers next to never. I generally stick to the news, sports and opinion pages.
However, yesterday I was flipping through the Union-Tribune Web site when I came across this column by the paper's religion reporter Sandi Dolbee. Now, Dolbee has done some solid reporting from time to time, but this column has got to be one of the lamest I've seen in quite awhile.
I'm not sure whom I should apologize to first, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or “Grey's Anatomy” actress Chandra Wilson. Either way, I'm about to hook them up – ethically speaking, that is.
Last month, Rumsfeld continued his reign as king of swing, launching blistering words as if they were fastballs down the middle. This time, he likened war critics to people who failed to recognize the threat of Hitler's Germany. “Those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and Nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored,” he said.
I called Steven Brydon, a professor at California State University in Chico and co-author of a textbook on public speaking, to find out what he thought of Rumsfeld's us-against-them Nazi references. Brydon brought up the ABC series “Grey's Anatomy,” in which Wilson plays a feisty senior surgical resident affectionately known as “the Nazi.”
“There was a time when that wouldn't have been acceptable,” Brydon says of both. “The problem is, of course, as time recedes and fewer people have direct experience with something, we forget what it was really like.”
A couple of things to note:
First, this is all about Dolbee not approving of Rumsfeld's speech. Normally this sort of thing would be on the opinion pages, but this piece is a little too lame for those pages. Dolbee doesn't really make an argument, she hands it off to Brydon to make her argument for her.
Second, the argument she's trying to make doesn't even work because Rumsfeld is not calling his foes Nazis. Let me say that again: Rumsfeld is not calling war critics Nazis.
Rumsfeld is using history to warn against complacency in the war on terrorism and, unfortunately, Dolbee just doesn't get it.
Brydon notes the irony of invoking this most horrible era. “There was probably no speaker of the 20th century who was more effective in accomplishing his goals than Hitler,” he says. “But no one, hopefully, would consider his techniques ethical.”
He won't say Rumsfeld and “Grey's Anatomy” are unethical, although he acknowledges that “there's a difference between unethical and destructive of a civil atmosphere in our society.”
Most people don't begrudge tough talk by their leaders, and “Grey's Anatomy” is a popular show. But ethics means not accepting the bad with the good. My grandmother knew the difference. She liked me just fine, but when I said something awful, she washed my mouth out with soap. Where are we keeping the Ivory these days?
Something awful? You've got to be kidding me! Dolbee is hereby sentenced to read the DailyKos for the next week.
This is silly. It is not "unethical" to use history as a tool to warn the public about issues we face today -- even World War II. By Dolbee's standard, it'd be "unethical" to teach about the run up to WW II in a high school history class.
Fortunately for Dolbee, freedom of the press allows journalists the freedom to say and write stupid things.
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[...] I’d suggest that articles like the one I referenced here are evidence of that liberal mindset. HH: I know, but national politics. Local politics is different. I think it’s in the selection of stories, stories not pursued. I mean, right now, the canard is oh, I covered the impeachment of Bill Clinton, liberal Democrats who are newsroom types tell me. I say, well, you have to. That’s a story you can’t…it’s like not seeing the iceberg, and taking the Titanic down. But in the agenda setting stuff…let me approach it this way. Is there any big name political reporter, and you know them all, Thomas Edsall. That’s why your book, Building Red America, is getting read left and right. Are there any of them who are conservative? [...]