talkpolitics | The Macho Naivete of Right Wing Desk Jockies

From Think Progress:

Marty Peretz, on pro-Mubarak mobs attacking foreign correspondents: Frankly, I thought that you guys were – and women – engaging in a little professional narcissism. Revolutions are not birthday parties. And what happened in Beijing, in Prague, in Budapest, in Berlin, uh, was about the same as what is happening now. And since the media has in fact made itself, by announcing its techniques a very legitimate target in a certain way. I mean, it’s cruel, but if you’re going after the regime, the regime will go after you. This regime is not a sweet regime. This regime is not tolerant…

Think Progress put together a video round-up of the right wing media reaction to the reporter beatings. What comes through is an apparent inability to grasp that covering dangerous situations is a reporter’s job. Denouncing a foreign correspondent for going in to report on a volatile situation is kind of like denouncing a fireman for heading towards a fire.

There’s also a thudding ignorance that conflates hard working reporters with cable anchors. Marty Peretz has the gall to pretend that correspondents like Amanpour need to be told that revoluations “are not birthday parties” and “this regime is not a sweet regime.” Especially offensive is Mike Gallagher’s rant about Amanpour and Anderson Cooper, where he implies that Amanpour is anti-American and says of Cooper:

Maybe that isn’t where you ought to go wandering around Anderson, all, what are you about 5’7” – 5’8”? What do you go Anderson about 160? With your little perfectly coiffed grey hair and your little delicate features you might not want to go over to Egypt and walk around the middle of a crowd that’s screaming 'death to America.'

The fact that you’ve seen Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour being interviewed in a studio doesn’t mean they’re merely pampered celebrities. Cooper did on the spot reporting in Rwanda during the genocide. Amanpour has worked as a wartime journalist in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

It is beyond hubris for the likes of Gallagher and Peretz to paint either of these seasoned correspondents as fluffy-headed naifs.

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes