All Blog Posts from Public Eye

This week, Time magazine Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware appeared on Hugh Hewitt's radio show. (You can read the transcript of the interview here, or listen to the MP3.) Ware, a native Australian who I spoke to in September, has lived and worked in Afghanistan and Iraq since shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He has spent far more time in the region than the vast majority of foreign-born reporters, and has covered not just coalition forces but also Iraqi insurgents and Islamic jihadists.

In the interview, Hewitt asked Ware about the "morality" of spending time with and covering the insurgents and jihadists, and said he "would prefer that [Ware] not report on the insurgents." Here is one of Hewitt's questions:

No, but it does, however, get to the question of whether or not media from the West should be...what's the right word, Michael Ware? It's not assisting, but providing information flow to the jihadis about whom I'm quite comfortable, and I think most Westerners are quite comfortable, just declaring to be evil, because they kill innocents, and that killing of innocents is evil, is it not, Michael? (ellipses in transcript)

Putting aside Hewitt's construction, in which he turns a question about what the media should be doing into one about whether or not the "killing of innocents is evil" – and, full disclosure here, I've tussled with Hewitt in the past – I think it's worth exploring Hewitt's larger point, which has to do with the role of Western-affiliated journalists in a war.

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I was not enthusiastic when Dick Meyer approached me about the suggestion from Hugh Hewitt that they make public their recent correspondence. Initially I was hesitant to put the back-and-forth on PE for a couple reasons.



First off, I felt like I had reasonably explained my position on the inane reaction to Brian Montopoli’s story about journalist bloggers. Sometimes a list is just a list, but I don’t think even Freud could psychoanalyze those who saw sinister motives at work in ours. Secondly, it struck me as being a smidge over-indulgent. Of course, so does this entry thus far but believe me, there’s a larger point in here somewhere.



In the end, it was the idea of “transparency” that persuaded me that we should air the exchange for the whole World Wide Web to see. That and the rather revealing agenda at play on the part of Hewitt (I’ll leave it to others to find Meyer’s agenda). It’s one I saw demonstrated elsewhere this week.

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First, some plain set-up so as not to prejudice you readers:



Earlier this week, Hugh Hewitt, the conservative blogger and radio host objected to an item in Public Eye listing some journalists who blog on his blog. He didn’t post anything about it in our comment section but some of his readers seem to have. Hewitt did invite the author of the piece, Brian Montopoli to his radio show (the transcript is here).



Hewitt and I have a mutual professional friend. Public Eye had also invited him to write one its “Outside Voices” pieces. Though I felt he had very deliberately distorted the Public Eye item and then refused to listen to a word Brian said in their interview, I had also been told that Hewitt was a terrific guy. So I wrote him a personal e-mail. He responded (copying our friend, by the way) and we went back a few times. Eventually, Hewitt suggested that we both publish the e-mail train.



I agreed, but uncomfortably. I don’t know about Hewitt, but I intended the correspondence to be private. Whether it serves any purpose to publish these notes, well, judge for yourself. If you’d like to comment, you’ll have to do here since Hewitt’s blog does not post comments.



My goal in contacting Hewitt was to bring him into the conversation here in a civil, honest way. This wasn’t how I anticipated it would happen, but I hope it is useful or enlightening in some way. I won’t say anymore until later on and will let these e-mails speak for themselves for now. And by the way, my e-mails don’t necessarily reflect the views on Vaughn Ververs, the editor of Public Eye, or anyone else around here.



I’d suggest reading from the bottom up. The only editing I did was to remove e-mail addresses. I left the typos and mess-ups in both our e-mails. I don’t know what Hewitt did on his site.



Here it is:




Hi Dick:



Sorry for the delay in responding. I was taping a piece for the Newshour on the collapse of the media's levees in New orleans --the throat slashed 7 year old, the stacks of bodies in the freezer etc.

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The word of the day is: “overreact.” As in, bloggers and commentators certainly did overreact to our posting about journalists who blog. Perhaps the words should have been lack-of-comprehension, but we’ll give everyone the benefit of the doubt and say they just overreacted.



If one reads our entry about journalist bloggers, it’s really pretty clear what we were shooting for. Brian stipulated in the opening that the purpose of this was an exercise in looking at journalists who are writing blogs that “allow them to say what they don’t on the air or in print.” Perhaps the parameters of this could have been explained a little better, but we thought it was fairly clear. We were trying to demonstrate how many people who are best known as MSM members are now blogging.



Apparently not. Here’s what Hugh Hewitt had to say:

”This is really funny. CBS Speaks! And I’m ‘right on the line’ but don’t qualify! Egads. Not up to Brian (‘I haven’t always been a journalist’) Montopoli’s measure. Out, out, damn spot.”

It seems that Hewitt may have started a little stampede here judging by some of the comments posted to our entry. At no point in the story did we judge these blogs in any way, positive or negative. At no point did we recommend them for their content. We simply pointed out their existence.



Hewitt has always been among those leading the charge in demanding more transparency, openness and humility from the MSM. I confess, I just don’t get this one. Is it that hubristic to simply make a list?



In some ways it’s a hat tip to Hewitt and others that so many in the MSM are jumping aboard. This list shows how many MSM-journos are using the blog format.



But in all, well, humility, Public Eye, as far as I know, is the most serious attempt to take on the bigger Hewitt project of openess and accountability. We wish he would have taken the time to engage us in a much more serious manner.



Maybe tomorrow’s word of the day can be: “relax.”

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