MalWare

dueler88

Hugh Hewitt had a very enlightening conversation yesterday on his show with Michael Ware, Australian-born journalist associated with Time magazine. Mr. Ware has spent much of his time embedded with Iraqi insurgents. That’s all fine and good, in a sense of getting the complete story. But when the people on whom a reporter is reporting threaten said reporter’s life, it makes the situation extraordinarily ripe for bias. Yet he claims that bias is non-existent in his reporting.

Gee, I dunno – if a crazed militant threatened to kill me because of what I choose to write about him, it might have an effect on how I portray events. What about you?

Now, if members of the U.S. military threatened to cap embedded reporters if they didn’t say the right things, you might have balanced reporting. It’d be non-factual, but at least it’d be non-factual on both sides of the fight, eh?

Mr. Ware is obviously a very brave and very competent reporter, doing the best he can under extremely difficult circumstances. I commend his efforts. However, it should go without saying that death threats by a reporter's subject matter need to be taken in to consideration when determining whether or not “the whole story” is being told.