Journalism

Don't trust the media, at least not CNN. Says who? New York Timesphotojournalist Vincent Laforet, currently on assignment in Pakistan. On a Web page for sports photographers Vincent Laforet advised: "Don't trust anything you see on TV and be wary of some of the things you read. I witnessed how sensationalistic the media can be during the Florida recount. It's even worse here. We covered a pro-Taliban demonstration last week attended by maybe 5,000 protestors. CNN stated there were 50,000. The BBC estimated 40,000.

When the White House, via National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, requested recently that the networks not air any future unedited videos of Osama bin Laden, the broadcast media's top managers meekly complied. "Thanks to the White House and its high-level courtiers in the media, we Americans -- or those of us without the proper hardware -- are now the only people in the whole developed world who can't actually hear what our enemy is saying about us. That's an odd distinction, considering we are also his main targets," writes Mark Crispin Miller.

The Newspaper Guild, which represents newspaper employees throughout the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, has established an electronic clearinghouse on its website that tracks how news organizations treat dissenting journalists during the "war on terrorism." It notes that "the right, obligation and necessity of free inquiry, of the uncensored exchange of news and information, and of vigorous debate and the exchange of conflicting views and opinions ...

There is an aching information vacuum at the center of the war on terrorism, which sources on both sides of the conflict -- both governments and terrorists -- are trying to fill. "The irony is that the US media have already proved willing to comply with military orders when it matters," observes Jay Rayner. "Seventeen news organisations knew three days before that the bombing of Afghanistan was to start on Sunday, and said nothing."