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I was watching CNN this morning and caught an interesting exchange between Soledad O'Brien and reporter Michael Ware, who is following Senator John McCain and his Republican Congressional delegation in Baghdad. The comments aren't online yet, but I've transcribed them below.

O'Brien: Let me ask you a question. There was a report that said you were heckling, and you were laughing, during the senator's press conference. Is that true?

Ware: Well, let's bear in mind that this is a report that was leaked by an unnamed official of some kind to a blog. To somewhere on the Internet. No one has gone and put their name forward, we certainly haven't heard Senator McCain say anything about it, or any of his staff have come forward to say anything about it.

I did not heckle the senator. Indeed, I didn't say a word, I didn't even ask a question. In fact, when I raised my hand to ask a question, the press conference abruptly ended. So what I would suggest is that anyone who has any queries about whether I heckled watch the videotape of the press conference.

The "blog" in question is the Drudge Report, and here's what Drudge wrote, in part:

During a live press conference in Baghdad, Senators McCain and Graham were heckled by CNN reporter Michael Ware. An official at the press conference called Ware’s conduct “outrageous,” saying, “here you have two United States Senators in Bagdad giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments. I’ve never witnessed such disrespect. This guy is an activist not a reporter.”

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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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