As a former journalist, one of the things that shocks me most these days when watching news reports from world trouble spots is how television reporters have seemingly aligned themselves with the enemies of western democracies.
In the former Yugoslavia, the Australian ABC's star reporter shook hands with 'Arkan' with a subservient bow at the start of an interview (see "Servile in Serbia" elsewhere in my archives), in East Timor TV crews appeared to incite firebrands to torch buildings for the viewers' passing thrills, in the West Bank the cameras usually look at Israeli soldiers from behind RPG-toting, masked Palestinians and in Iraq, hostages are displayed by their so-called insurgent captors in close cooperation with the respective network involved.
I say "involved" quite advisedly, because if reporters of any description become an integral part of such brutal blackmail, they become part of the terror - and as such should be seen as legitimate targets in the so-called war on terror. This means that if the network in question is an accountable entity, i.e. a western news channel, any reporter or TV crew consorting with criminals in this way ought to be thrown out of the country - and have their accreditation closely reviewed in other jurisdictions as well.
If the team is patently part of the enemy propaganda machine, then not only its 'journalists' and 'cameramen' should be declared "enemy combattants" and offered free Cuban holidays of indeterminate duration. Their backoffice facilities, too, could publicly have their coordinates entered into the onboard computers of some smart coalition missiles - and they would have 72 hours each time to call off their crazy "clients" before the sponsoring station is taken off the air!
You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, as some French neocon said when they still had their balls...
In this spirit, I'll sign off thus for assorted Spanish-speaking coalition partners: "!COBARDES!"
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