Vietnam Syndrome Acknowledged

[darrels joy]

Vietnam Syndrome Acknowledged
ABC's Terry Moran, the White House correspondent who the other day demanded of White House press secretary Scott McClellan, "Who made you editor of Newsweek?," yesterday appeared on Hugh Hewitt's radio show. Somewhat surprisingly, he said he "agree[d] with the substance of what Scott McClellan was saying, that it would be a good thing for Newsweek to come out try to undo some of the damage that was done by its report." And he basically pronounced himself satisfied with McClellan's answer that he wasn't "telling the media [what] to do." Had McClellan been doing that, Moran told Hewitt, it would have amounted to "demagoguery." We can't really disagree.

More interesting, though, is this acknowledgment:

There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous. That's different from the media doing its job of challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor.

Moran tells Hewitt he finished college in 1982, which presumably makes him around 45; certainly he looks too young to have come of age in the Vietnam/Watergate era. It may be that the bad habits the media learned during those years will fade away as older journalists and executives retire and younger ones move up the ladder.
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