the natives are getting restless

[topaz]

From Slate: the reporters are getting angry.

Related: Crooks and Liars supplies a video clip of Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera losing it on camera. (Say what you will about Geraldo, I don't think this was staged -- he's just not that good an actor.)

These video and audio clips are stunning. They are all worth reviewing. The NPR clip linked from Slate is particularly riveting: I have never heard Robert Siegel come so close to losing his temper during an interview.

At dinner last night someone else brought up this phenomenon of reporters being unable to maintain neutrality. My mother said she had heard one reporter say that this was the first time in her career that she felt she could not stay on the sidelines, that she had a moral obligation to intervene in the situation.

It seems as though New Orleans, and not Iraq, could become this generation's Vietnam. It is obviously too soon to tell, but no other event I have seen in my lifetime has led the press -- or the public -- to such open disbelief with the government's statements as the events of the last week have. The protests against the two Gulf Wars, by contrast, seem remote and detached: outrage from the usual suspects and bland equivocation from the media. I have never seen such rage from the press.

Comments

[mr-privacy.livejournal.com]

I was going to say Vietnam was an ongoing event, and that this will be swept aside by events. But I think Sylvain's closer here. Vietnam was ongoing, Watergate was a single event, which no one could have forseen.