Ashleigh Banfield Gives Impressive Speech
You should read the full-text of Ashleigh Banfield’s Landon Lecture at Kansas State University given last Thursday. Apparently NBC has chastised her over this, but if you focus on that aspect of the story you will miss what’s really interesting here. I first noticed Banfield on MSNBC after September 11, 2001. I thought she was likely another ditzy cable-news talking-head. When she went to Afghanistan, I thought whether she was ditzy or not, she was at least driven. Since then I haven’t seen much of her (I got rid of my cable.) Well, I am writing to report that Ashleigh Banfield is a smart, devoted journalist that cares about getting the real story. You will hear a journalist say things you didn’t think any of them realized when you read this speech. If I were NBC, I would give her whatever she wants and look high and low to hire twenty more just like her. I wasn’t sure there were still journalists that devoted to their craft. An excerpt,
You didn’t see where those bullets landed. You didn’t see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism or was this coverage-? There is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not mean you’re getting the story, it just means you’re getting one more arm or leg of the story. And that’s what we got, and it was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn’t journalism, because I’m not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful terrific endeavor, and we got rid of a horrible leader: We got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn’t see what it took to do that.
If NBC wants to reprimand one of their employees, I know someone now who they should simply show the door. Ashleigh continues,
We hired somebody on MSNBC recently named Michael Savage. Some of you may know his name already from his radio program. He was so taken aback by my dare to speak with Al -Aqsa Martyrs Brigade about why they do what they do, why they’re prepared to sacrifice themselves for what they call a freedom fight and we call terrorism. He was so taken aback that he chose to label me as a slut on the air. And that’s not all, as a porn star. And that’s not all, as an accomplice to the murder of Jewish children. So these are the ramifications for simply being the messenger in the Arab world.
Don’t stop fighting for the story, Ashleigh! Some of us still like to hear all sides of a story and don’t run in horror when someone expresses a minority opinion. (Thanks to Siva for the pointer.)
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