When journalists are unpatriotic

During the build-up to the Iraq invasion, a lot of major media outlets were frightened of appearing unpatriotic.

They joined in the jingoistic fervor that led to what many critics (including Republicans and conservatives) have described as one of the major foreign policy blunders in U.S. history.

Now the journalism community is screwing it up again, by going silent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while U.S. soldiers are still dying.

“America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq,” reports the NY Times.

“The war has gone on longer than a lot of news organizations’ ability or appetite to cover it,” said Jane Arraf, a former Baghdad bureau chief for CNN who has remained in Iraq as a contract reporter for The Christian Science Monitor.

Joseph Angotti, a former vice president of NBC News, said he could not recall any other time when all three major broadcast networks lacked correspondents in an active war zone that involved United States forces.

Except, of course, in Afghanistan, where about 30,000 Americans are stationed, and where until recently no American television network, broadcast or cable, maintained a full-time bureau.

Now that’s unpatriotic.