BBS has links to Lisa LaFlamme’s W5 report, Outside the wire.
“I would do it again because I think there is an undertold story here. We report on the military, we report on the Department of National Defence in Ottawa, Canada’s role in peacekeeping. But we don’t tell the story of these guys and their devotion to the mission,” she said.
Well, if reading from the pages of the New York Times from behind the wall in the Green Zone can be called “reporting”. I’m no fan of LaFlamme’s foreign affairs work – prior to this she’s been unwatchably superficial. Let’s hope this is a sign of better things to come out of CTV.
A commentor at BBS has it right though; “What’s more, maybe we should ask why journalists who cover security crises don’t have more military experience to begin with.”
Indeed.
Printed by the NYT! With a typical NYT’s headline: don’t worry, it says: Waldo’s an eccentric, a “contrarian”. See, he’s not a real person.
Waldo Benavidez :Pushed out of “his comfortable old political box
with its predictably liberal labels and causes.”
Reality is cold,rockhard, ugly, at times. +
A Liberal’s Contrarian Views
NEW YORK TIMES ^ | April 15,2006 | KIRK JOHNSON
Posted on 04/16/2006 5:19:57 PM PDT by Sharks
DENVER, April 15 � Sitting at the Auraria Community Center here on a recent morning with his cat, Tails, perched before him on the desk, Waldo Benavidez gestured to a large portrait of Emiliano Zapata, the leader of the 1910 Mexican revolution � and Mr. Benavidez’s personal hero.
Mexicans here illegally, Mr. Benavidez said, should take a lesson from those days and return home to fight for change in their own country.
“If you’re tough enough to cross the desert, you’re tough to take on your own government and change it,” he said.
Mr. Benavidez has spent most of his adult life working on behalf of the poor. For the last 25 years he has managed the community center and a food bank here on Denver’s west side, where low-income families can get groceries. He marched for civil rights in the 1960’s and relishes the memory of his first vote for president, for John F. Kennedy, in 1960.
But immigration’s tangled implications have pushed him out of his comfortable old political box with its predictably liberal labels and causes. Supporting the poor in America, he said, now means shutting down the system that has created a flood of even poorer immigrants from Mexico. +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1616175/posts
I was fairly impressed with LaFlamme’s work on this one. She actually did the complete mission with Charlie company. The interviews were done while in the field and were in-depth. Her questions demonstrate the fact that she spent time getting to know everyone in the company. I too hope to see more work like this, unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath waiting for it.
From what I understand, Chris Wattie at the National Post is ex-military. And it does show in his work.
At a speech I attended recently, MGen Andrew Leslie (who commanded Canadian troops in Afghanistan a few years back, and who will soon be promoted LGen and Chief of the Land Staff) singled out both Wattie and Stephen Thorne of CP as Canadian reporters who do a good job on military issues.
Maz – please keep your tips at least tangentially on topic.
Journalists appear narrow-minded and suspicious when it comes to military matters usually, if more of them were open minded types of people then it probably wouldn’t matter whether or not they themselves had military experience.
it seemed pretty good to me . i thought she was fairly honest in her stories . her work when she was doing the reporting from there didn’t do the same political crap that cbc tried doing . at least its a hell of a lot better than cbcs “unprecidented ” bullshit when mansbridge flew there at our expense , bought a fancy scarf and stood in the airport for an hour and then flew away.what the hell was the purpose of him being there anyway ? does the cbc even have anyone there now ?
“unwatchably superficial” pretty well sums up LaFlamme for me as well, Kate.
However, I give her full marks for going “outside the wire” with the troops into a high risk operation.
How CTV coverage of our troops in the Afghanistan mission long after the W5 story plays out, time alone will tell.
My gut feeling it will eventually be negative spin.
Journalists are not soldiers. They are not trained as soldiers because it would affect their reporting. We already get more than a fair share of propaganda from the government publicity machine, which is headed by the Prime Minister on this side of the border and the President on the other side.
More journalists have been killed in the last five years than in any previous war. Journalists like to report from their own sources but have to rely on Military because they cannot go out on their own. In many respects the two Iraq wars have been the worst reported wars ever. The soldiers cannot say anything just the press officer. That is why there is always a delay finding out important news. The fraud, the insurgency, abu garib, infastructure building delays(20 out of 150 medical clinics built when all were supposed to be done by now), Taliban resurgence in Afganistan,all these things were ongoing months before the public found out.
I don’t blame the journalists for not wanting to get killed. I am not sure there is a solution because the new reality is that both sides think journalists are fair game.
steve d
theres probably close to half an hour of soldiers saying things on w5 and three interviews along with that story on ctv.ca
I thought it was a good story.I give big kudos to La Flamme for actually going outside the wire and for toughing out what was for her I am sure a very uncomfortable 12 days