If you’re not angry with me yet, just keep reading.
Paul McLeary of the Columbia Journalism Review recently posted an article about the Frontlines blog I participated in with the New York Times. His article includes excerpts from an email interview he did with me and one other Frontlines blogger. You can find his article second from the top at http://www.cjrdaily.org/behind_the_news/
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You write good stuff, Jeff. Period.
“Although his superiors had no problem with his Times affiliation at first, Barnett’s period of contributing to Frontlines is ending after his next post, due, as he says on his personal blog, to “a litany of rules and regulations that make it next to impossible for an active duty Marine to work for a media publication such as the Times.”
http://www.cjrdaily.org/behind_the_news/new_york_times_goes_to_the_sou.php
JE, could you possibly list some of the milblogs you’ve found? Thanks.
JE, I have added Jeff to the top of my regular reading. I, like others here read the blogs to get the real broader picture. Here are two more that link many more so you can get allot of information and process it your self.
http://iraqethemodel.blogspot.com
kelly
Oh I made a typo it is
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com
my apologies.
Bush and the Republicans were not protecting us on 9-11, and we aren’t a lot safer now. We may be more afraid due to george bush, but are we safer? Being fearful does not necessarily make one safer. Fear can cause people to hide and cower. What do you think? How does that work in a democracy again? How does being more threatening make us more likeable?Isn’t the country with
the most weapons the biggest threat to the rest of the world? When one country is the biggest threat to the rest of the world, isn’t that likely to be the most hated country?
Our country is in debt until forever, we don’t have jobs, and we live in fear. We have invaded a country and been responsible for thousands of deaths.
The more people that the government puts in jails, the safer we are told to think we are. The real terrorists are wherever they are, but they aren’t living in a country with bars on the windows. We are.
I read this review/interview with interest and appreciated the additional insights garnered from both you and Capt. Smith. Among other things, I am entirely in agreement with your view on the MSM. I do not, however, concur with the view that you have BEEN the MSM. I think perhaps the pejorative underpinning of the term is missed by many who are in the media. You were, in the biblical sense, “in the world but not of it”.
I started reading the milblogs when I found not only that I was not getting the whole story on war news but that what I was getting was leaving me not just ill-informed but also discouraged. The first blog I found was highly informative, wholly patriotic and committed to the mission in Iraq. I found a facsimile out of Afghanistan. The down turn in the American view of the war is that the daily drum beat of defeat does have an affect. I found a remedy in that first blog, also from a marine who had no use for the MSM!! I now read a number of milblogs and I believe that I have as full a picture as it is possible to obtain at such a distance from the war zones.
I still watch and read news reports but the milblogs keep me aware of the larger picture and very often the nuances that make the different between the story and the spin of a story. Captain Smith alluded to just such an occurrence in the news coverage of a story last summer: they actually missed the real story!
Thank-you for sharing your blog not just with family and friends but with those who want an honest view of what is happening in something as vital to our future, individually and nationally, as is this struggle. God bless you and stay safe.