A Journalist Answers The Question, Why Ignore Michael Yon's Scoop?

A "journalist whose name you'd recognize," Instapundit says.

Yon's story doesn't get attention because it is humiliating.

It is humiliating because it is obvious that we media � and our allies in the state department, the legal trade, the NGOs, the Democratic Party, the UN, etc., - can�t do squat about such determined use of force.

Our words, images, arguments and skills can�t stop the killing. Only the rough soldiers and their guns can solve the problem, and we won�t admit that fact because the admission would weaken our influence and our claim to social status.

I think that's only partly the reason, though, because the media obviously doesn't have much problem reporting on the discovery of sixty-three-bazillion headless bodies in the Green Zone motor pool. And obviously, they can't do a damn thing about that, either.

Part of it is just more basic: simple vanity. Journalists' status comes from their presumption that they, and only they, have the skills necessary to report big stories.

They have an emotional investment in this ego-serving proposition.

If a non-accredited gate-crasher like Michael Yon breaks a story, it must therefore have not been a big story in the first place, otherwise, of course, they would have covered it first, right?

And something a little more than that: It embarrasses them they they seem to rely on emails from shady police operatives for their "scoops" -- without even bothering to visit the alleged site of massacres -- while Michael Yon is actually out in the field, slogging through the sand, digging -- quite literally -- for the stories they're supposed to be oh-so-expert at reporting on.

While they sit in the Intercontintal Hotel "reporting" what agenda-driven tipsters and outright hoaxers simply drop into their email box, this non-reporter is actually acting as the real sort of reporter they always dreamed of one day being. Before deciding it was just too darn difficult.

But also-- what this other guy said, too.

Thanks to CJ.

posted by Ace at 10:39 PM

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