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November 01, 2005

Report the (Republican) Government's Line or Go to Jail, Comrade

Remember when conservatives complained that liberals were the ones who wanted to stifle dissent through speech codes and "hate speech" legislation?

Well, here's our friend Alan Caruba, a supposed conservative, complaining about press coverage of the war on Iraq:

Thanks to Tony Blankley's excellent new book, "The West's Last Chance", consider the National Association of Broadcasters' wartime guide to reporting, issued on December 18, 1941, within weeks of Pearl Harbor. "Do not broadcast any long list of casualties. This has been specifically forbidden."

Or the Press Codes issued by the federal Office of Censorship on February 20, 1942. "Criticism of equipment, appearance, physical condition or more of the armed forces of the United States or any of its allies" was forbidden, with a special warning that "Equal caution should be used in handling so-called atrocity stories."

Compare that with "War's toll on U.S. troops nears 2,000" an accompanying story to the one that jumped from page one to page eight. Across the top of page eight ran a banner graphic of "Tragic milestone in Iraq fighting" which literally showed a line of bars indicating by month the "number of deaths weekly." Other daily newspapers insist on printing the photos and names of casualties.

I suggest this is nothing more than treacherous journalism whose purpose is to undermine support for our armed forces and for the war they are fighting to defeat America's enemies in the Middle East before they bring that war-again-to our shores.

It's bad enough that Caruba thinks such reports are "treacherous," but then he essentially proposes the incarceration of dissenting journalists and the shutting down of their newspapers:

[Reporter Helen] Thomas has long opposed the war to overthrow the vicious tyrant, Saddam Hussein, at one point asking then White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, why Bush wanted to "bomb and kill thousands of Iraqis, including women and children?"

This is the kind of journalism that, in World War II, would have put its perpetrators behind bars and put newspapers out of business.

Red-state fascism is alive and well.

Posted by Mike Tennant at November 1, 2005 08:40 AM

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