Saving Private Jessica

[mrph]

I imagine that, by now, most people have seen the "debunking" of the Jessica Lynch rescue - the BBC and Guardian carried it, and I'm sure some other (non-UK?) media sources did, too.

What you may not have seen is the response from readers (including many American readers) on the BBC Correspondent website.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/read_your_comments/3034009.stm

Hmm.

Comments

[lougarry.livejournal.com]

hmmm?
Didn't see the program, but from what has been said it certainly sounds like it was a good piece of PR for the US.
The whole war smells fishy, but then what do you expect from the media moguls who own Fox and Sky. Found them terribly one sided (as in pro Allies, anti Iraq) and the BBC was pretty much as 'truthful' as you could get - well, BBC reports conflicted with much of the SKy/Fox news broadcasts.
Sky has far too much graphics, and not enough 'in your face' news happenings.
The best (though it was not a good situation) was when John Simpson was reporting near Kalak when the US airforce accidentily bombed the news and military convoy. Now that was good[1]reporting IMO - unlike the drivel spouted by Fox/sky etc, that was literally oozing spin and anti-iraqi semtiment.

And as for comments made by americans about their own forces not firing on ambulances, well...they did a bloody fine job of killing our troops in 'friendly fire' and Iraqi civillians...I doubt that a red cross/crescent on the side of a van will prevent US marines from openning fire.


[1] - in a reporting sense, because you could see he wanted to scream bloody blue murder, but kept his cool under the circumstances

[lsur.livejournal.com]

Like that 'incident' during the first Gulf War. In a tearful press conference a 'nurse' recounted how Iraqi soldiers had thrown Kuwaiti babies from incubators on the floor. Turned out the 'nurse' was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and the whole story scripted by a PR company. We have the wool pulled over our eyes from day one in these conflicts. Blair is a seriously misguided individual.