Bias reporting?

Question

I just read the report about those Marines shooting the civilians in Haditha, Iraq. I do not condon the killings but I can see why. In my war (Vietnam) we were always being shot at by snipers. YES some times some of our men would get crazy & shoot innocent people. Most of those who did so were brought upon charges. I wonder why the media spends so much time on this case when there are americans fighting for their lives but no one in the media seems to care. Yes if these marines are guilty then they should pay the price.But why cant the media also show how the Enemy hides in houses with Wemen & children knowing in a fire fight the civilians are going to be hurt. Do the media think we hurt these people because we like it? How about FAIR reporting?

Answer 1

you know its a sad thing, thats why i stopped watching news in all forms, until i found out about FOX News. that is fair, you should watch it sometimes.

Answer 2

The Reporting is Factual: I don't care if it's fair on not, it is factual. If yum try to be politically correct about the news and not hurt anybody's feelings, then it's no longer factual.

In Haditha, the Marines there went from house to house, ordered people to kneel on the ground, then they shot them in the back of the head. While I can understand that they cracked under pressure and started hating Iraq and all the people in it, that is still not an excuse. They should have gone to the marine Psychologist when they started feeling like that (that's what they're there for) and gotten therapy, or even medical leave. Yes, there was a problem in the system, but in the end, the Marines who killed those people must be held accountable for their own actions. They should have gotten a mental examination, they chose not to. They could have, They chose not to.

Facts aren't always fair to all parties. The only Bias here is towards the facts. While the war could be a big story, what would the news report about it? the war is going to hell in a handbasket just like yesterday? The Media Reports on Changes, not things that are normal, for good or for bad.

Answer 3

I don't think the reporting is fair. Almost every story is about something an America did wrong, or another American casualty. None of the major news networks seem to focus on what we are doing right in Iraq, or the people whose lives were saved or made better since we removed Saddam. I also understand your Vietnam comparison. My father was in Vietnam, and he would tell stories of children, or unarmed "civilians" running up to our soldiers with hand grenades with the pin pulled. After seeing a fellow soldier blown up by some suicidal kid, the next time a kid running towards you, are you wait to see if he has a grenade or not? That is a decision you have seconds to make.

Also, when was the last time you saw a story about a hero in Iraq who wasn't either killed or significantly injured. There are many heroes who come home with no injuries, no stories about them. That is because they show the bright side of the War, something the media doesn't like, it doesn't make for ratings. They make it seem the everything about this war is bad.

They also like to paint the picture that almost every soldier is against the war and sent their against their will. That isn't the case, 2/3 of our Iraqi soldiers voted for Bush in 2004, that may be 2 years about but that isn't shown in the news. The media made all us know the name Cindy Sheehan, and how her son died in Iraq. But how often do you hear them tell us that her son volunteered to return for a second tour? He went to go back because he wanted to and believed in the war, not because he was made to. Cindy Sheehan and the media never mention that. We need fair and balanced reporting of this issue, not a focus on how many died, or what we did wrong.

Answer 4

Ultimately this story is garnering so much attention because of the fact that it reminds us of Vietnam. Iraq has turned into a quagmire, just as Vietnam had. Incidents like these illustrate the despiration of the situation, and the media LOVES to draw parallels between the two conflicts.

Plus the massacre was brutal, and unbecomming of United States Marines. People have a right to know what their armed forces are doing, especially if they violate international law.

Answer 5

let me see if i understand.

because of something some snipers did in vietnam, it's ok for the marines to kill a bunch of civilians in haditha.

right off the bat, i'd have to guess that the snipers involved in vietnam, aren't present in iraq at this moment.

more than anything else, i'd love to hear somewhere a rational person tell me how what the media says about what happens in firefights in any changes the fact that heavily armed AMERICANS shot down some civilians.

i think you need to consider the ole right wrong issue again and wonder where you stand with regards to, you know, senseless murder.

Answer 6

SEE-BS, ABC, NBC, and CNN are just advancing a liberal agenda that the war is going awful, and want to brainwash suckers into thinking that Bush is horrible. Of course people are gonna die, it's a WAR. The deaths are no doubt sad, but no one can say it's unexpected.

Answer 7

Fair reporting doesn't make for exciting news. The media is ultimately profit driven, so they report what they think will sell.

Answer 8

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Sat Jan 6, 8:37 PM ET
Associated Press


WASHINGTON - U.S. criminal investigators found no evidence to support the claim of Marines charged in the deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians that five were shot after trying to flee the scene of a roadside bombing that killed one Marine, a senior defense official said Saturday.

Investigators determined that all five Iraqis were shot within arm's length of each other and no more than 18 feet from the white taxi they were ordered to exit by members of a Marine squad in the western Iraqi town of Haditha, said the official, who is familiar with reports produced by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the killings on Nov. 19, 2005.

Two Marines are charged with murder in the five deaths. They are Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich and Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz.

Two other Marines — Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum — face murder charges in connection with the deaths of other Iraqi civilians shot shortly after the killings by the taxi.

Through his lawyers, Wuterich has claimed he acted appropriately and within military rules governing the use of deadly force in combat.

Mark Zaid, an attorney for Wuterich, said in an interview Saturday he was highly disappointed that information from the government's investigative report on Haditha had been leaked to the media. He called it an effort by unidentified Pentagon officials to "portray a negative slant of these Marines."

Tatum's attorney, Jack Zimmerman, said he got the report the day after Christmas and has not "even begun to crack it." He called disclosure of details from the report a "serious, serious violation" and said he may ask the military to investigate the source of the leak.

Attempts on Saturday to reach lawyers for DelaCruz and Sharratt were unsuccessful.

Dela Cruz told investigators he fired bullets into the five bodies as they lay on the ground and that he later urinated on one, the defense official said.

These details about the deaths were first reported in Saturday's Washington Post, which said it obtained a copy of a lengthy government investigative report. The Post published photos from the investigative file that had not previously been made public; one shows the five Iraqis sprawled near the taxi.

One of the five may have been kneeling at the time he was shot, the defense official told The Associated Press.

In addition to the four Marines facing murder charges, four other Marines who were not at the scene were charged with dereliction of duty for failing to report or properly investigate the killings. In all, the case involves the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians.

The Haditha investigation is the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths so far in the Iraq war.

Members of an explosive ordnance disposal team that was summoned to the scene scoured the taxi and found no weapons or evidence of bomb-making materials, the defense official said. At least two, and possibly four, of the five Iraqis were students; the other was the taxi driver, who was taking the students to school.

The Marines claimed later that the five were attempting to flee and that they fit the profile of military-age men who, in the past, had acted as spotters for insurgents setting off roadside bombs. Zaid said Wuterich's position is that the five had disobeyed the Marines' orders, issued in Arabic, and were starting to flee. He said the report that they were up to 18 feet from the taxi supports Wuterich's position.

The NCIS investigators determined that the five had no apparent link to the bombing that morning in Haditha that shattered a Marine Humvee utility vehicle and killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas; two other Marines were injured.

The shooting of the men near the taxi was the first in a series of violence responses by the Marines, according to the NCIS investigation. The Marines subsequently raided four nearby houses, killing 18 unarmed civilians inside three of the residences. One other was shot dead outside. Among the dead were women and children.

The Marines were with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

After the deaths, the Marines announced that 15 civilians had been killed in Haditha from a roadside bombing and a Marine firefight with insurgents. The Marines said eight insurgents also were killed. The Marines have since acknowledged that that report was false.

The matter, involving an unusually large number of civilian casualties, was not investigated by the military until a Time magazine reporter inquired about the deaths in January 2006.

The military launched the first phase of its investigation in February, and in March it began a separate administrative probe focusing on how the matter was reported in official Marine Corps channels and whether there was an attempted cover-up. On the basis of that investigation, four Marines were charged with dereliction of duty.

The NCIS began its probe in March and it grew into the agency's largest criminal investigation in years.

One worry of military prosecutors is that American investigators failed to persuade the families of the any of the 24 dead to permit their bodies to be exhumed and examined to obtain forensic evidence.

The NCIS had hoped to gain access to the bodies so they could, for example, compare wounds on the bodies to the blood stain patterns at the scene and to other evidence and witness statements.

U.S. government officials went so far as to propose through the Iraqi government in Baghdad last year that a nongovernment humanitarian organization with medical credentials be permitted to exhume and examine the 24 bodies, but the families rejected that approach.