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Saturday, December 18, 2004

How NOT to report a story: The Christian Science Monitor 
Greyhawk does a super job exposing a Christian Science Monitor reporter as a charlatan hack.

Hat tip: Cori Dauber

UPDATE:

Here's the letter I wrote to the reporter and the Christian Science Monitor:

Your article was so full of distortions and half-truths I didn't know where to begin.

A serving military blogger does a pretty good job here, though:

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/001907.html

I'll stick to questioning your grasp of factual matters.

1.) You claim that the Defense Department has acknowledged more than 5,500 servicemen have deserted since the war began. Where are they? What's your sourcing? CBS? Do you believe everything they tell you?

To quote an old newspaperman's maxim, "if your mother says she loves you, check it out."

2.) Yes the Guard and reserve are not seeing the numbers they originally targeted. But you don't mention one of the primary reasons: the guard and reserve rely on a certain number of troops leaving the active duty ranks. But since the reserve component is on active duty so much anyway, soldiers are just staying on active duty.

3.) You fail to mention that polls show that the military voted overwhelmingly for George Bush. Why? Shouldn't that be relevant in a story about troop morale?

4.) Your sourcing is one-sided. It's pretty clear you didn't try very hard to get a perspective other than the Quakers and other less respectable anti-war groups. And where you did, you failed to identify the nature of the groups...one of your basic responsibilities as a reporter.

5.) How many times did you mention Viet Nam? News flash: this ain't Viet Nam.

6.) You claim that the number of reserve officers wanting to resign has jumped. Ok. How many? How do you know? Why are they wanting to resign? My own Guard battion was mobilized in 2003 and deployed overseas in March-April. We had one officer resign. Not over policy, but because he made oodles of money as an executive. If he deployed, his family would have lost their home.

But we had perhaps 10 officers join the battalion from elsewhere in the guard, eager to volunteer. Several deliberately put off their IRR transfers, or came back after IRR. Did you mention those numbers?

7.) Your use of the loaded term "semi-draft" was both inaccurate and irresponsible. Perhaps an anti-war writer could justify it on an opinion page (although the claim would never stand up to analysis).

But on page 1? It's an embarrassment to your paper.

Had I been your editor, I would have handed this back to you for a significant rewrite, along with a stern warning about one-sided and sloppy sourcing, loaded language, and the casual flinging about of unsourced claims.


I'll keep you posted if I receive a reply. All relevant parts in the paper's reply or rebuttal, if any, will be posted verbatim.

Jason Van Steenwyk
Fort Lauderdale, Florida






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