The media's silly Fort Hood coverage

The media's silly Fort Hood coverage
Everyone wants to debate terrorism and political correctness, but the real story is the failure of Army medicine
By Mark Benjamin


The conventional narrative of the Fort Hood shootings, one week later, has been distinguished by the reporting of unconfirmed -- and sometimes incorrect -- details and the drawing of dubious conclusions. The only thing that suggests the current story will withstand the test of time better than the initial Pat Tillman myth (that he died in combat, rather than by friendly fire), or the overheated tale of heroism by Jessica Lynch in 2003 (which Lynch herself protested), is that two basic facts seem clear: The shootings certainly happened, and given the number of eyewitnesses, it's almost certain that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan did it.

The fact that it was first incorrectly reported that Hasan died in the shootings, and that he was in cahoots with other perpetrators, may well be fairly chalked up to confusion during that first chaotic day. Other details, however, continue to unravel a week later. The media debate provoked by the Hasan incident is equally off-topic and unreliable. As someone who's been asked to talk about the shootings because of my work covering the poor psychological care given to returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, I've had a front-row seat on the way preconceived biases are distorting the debate.

First, the ongoing factual unraveling of the narrative. As the New York Times reported this Thursday, initial information seized on by talk shows that Sgt. Kimberly Munley, a petite police officer, bravely brought down Hasan in a hail of gunfire in which she was also wounded was, well, also not true. Munley, it seems, just got shot. Senior Sgt. Mark Todd actually shot Hasan to the ground and cuffed him after Munley had already been wounded.

Also on Thursday, the Washington Post raised solid questions about previous reports that Hasan had tried to get out of his military service because of what he saw as a growing schism between his religious and military duties. While Hasan's aunt has said he wanted to get out of the military, the Post quotes an Army source who claims Hasan "did not formally seek to leave the military as a conscientious objector or for any other reason."

Despite some print publications attempting to keep track of these kinds of facts, a lot of media folks continue to ask the wrong questions and/or provide some of their own unlikely, or unsubstantiated, answers.

The Monday after the shootings, I got my first taste of how the story was embarking on a life of its own as I settled into a chair at one of MSNBC’s Washington studios to do Dylan Ratigan's “Morning Meeting.”

“One question being asked, among many, is whether political correctness stalled the response to possible warning signs from Maj. Hasan,” Ratigan said in his introduction. Ratigan then asked me if there had been “too much tolerance in this instance.”

Too much political correctness in the military? You know, the place where they fire you if you admit you’re gay? The Army has its share of challenges, but in a decade of covering the military, I certainly haven’t come across any evidence that the institution is somehow paralyzed by the burden of gratuitous political correctness. And while that might provide a convenient way for Army officials to explain, anonymously, why nobody prevented Hasan from killing 13 people -- “We are just too afraid of criticizing Muslims” -- I haven’t seen a shred of evidence to suggest this might be true.

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http://www.salon.com/news/fort_hood_shooting/index.html?story=/news/feature/2009/11/12/hasan_coverage#story_full_d847f62a50053421fe05869d657b5c37

He tried to contact an enemy of the United States of America, and as soon as that happened he should have been prosecuted for treason.

They didn't miss warning signs, they totally ignored them. He was in contact with a radical cleric sympathetic to Al Qaeda, that's an impossible sign to miss. Even if he didn't formally request a discharge his sorry ass should have gotten the "Big Chicken Dinner" simply for the fact that he was trying to talk to the enemy.

I don't see how this can be blamed on a failure of Army medicine.

for about 48 hours or so. The first reports are ALWAYS wrong. It could be due to the initial rush to get the story in as quickly as possible, but they never get it right at first.

It has been widely reported that his colleagues and superiors had serious doubts about his ability to practice Psychiatry at least as far back as his stint in Walter Reed. However, there are two factors which contributed to no action being taken against him - first, the Army (as is true with the other branches of the Armed Services) is woefully short of physicians. It would be very difficult, if not virtually impossible to dismiss him, particularly absent some truly clear-cut evidence of gross incompetence. Nothing like that has yet been reported. Secondly, he is a product of the Armed Forces medical school - the Army has a huge amount invested in him and his training, speaking again to the imperfectability of dismissing him. The Army as is true with all the armed services will make almost every attempt possible not to lose physician at this time. Given this, it seems that the only "option" available to his colleagues was to transfer him somewhere else, where they assumed others would help him and/or he could not do much harm. It's not right, but it is the reality in Military Medicine today.

All the army wants is bodies patched up so they can be shipped back to the front. One cannot be concerned about a soldier's health AND deliberately send that soldier into harm's way--one would go crazy.

Which is part of the point, in this horrible tragedy. I think the job drove this man crazy.

One babbling "newscaster," trying to fill up the gaping space alloted to "live coverage," speculates about some half-assed reports from witnesses, relatives, anyone who will get in front of a camera or talk to a reporter. The speculation is then regurgitated by other "newscasters" until everyone on the street is repeating it as truth. It is sick.

There should be some kind of accountability for reporting rumors on television just to have something out there to fill air time or be the first network to report some juicy tidbit that may or may not be fact.

Fox, Rush, and the rest of the right-wing "news" empire are pushing heavily for this incident to be labeled "a terrorist act." Why? Because they've got little else to run on in 2010 and 2012.

Sure, the economy's in bad shape, but most Americans are not ignorant of the 8 years of pro-business-at-any-cost policy that has led to it's current state. As for religious, or "family values," well, gay-bashing isn't as popular as it once was, and trying to hide Foley, Craig, Vitter, etc while trying to pimp "family values" smacks of hypocrisy. As a result, the only option available to keep the right-wing alive is to use FEAR... fear of brown people and fear of terrorism.

Anyone who watches Fox critically knows their story of the 9.11 attacks is that they were actually a delayed result of the Clinton presidency, and the Bush administration had no way of knowing what would/could happen. But, if we can get away with calling the Ft Hood tragedy "a terrorist act," then the right-wing will have it's campaign slogan ready: "Obama's weak on terrorism!" and "Less than 1 year in office, and America is under attack, again!"

Clearly, the brain-dead 20%ers will gobble this up without comment. But the rest of America's uninformed voters may actually take this seriously. Despite the obvious double-standard implied, Fox and Rush will push endlessly, as they see it's one of the best resources they have to campaign against Obama in 2010 and 2012.

by much of the corporate media as a means to affect the 2010 & 2012 elections in favor of the corporate supremacist, Republican Party.

I also believe the last four paragraphs of the O.P. article make a logical point as to an actual underlying cause but I disagree with the final sentence, "Army medicine didn't blow it" political leadership that lacked the courage of it's convictions did.

My ultimate conclusion is, when political "leaders;" wage open ended war with a voluntary, peace time army; "supplementing" them with overpaid for profit corporate mercenaries; which adversely serve as motivational reinstatement leeches on the military and financial tape worms on the overall defense budget, all because said "leaders" didn't have the political courage to reinstate a draft to support their appetite for premeditated, eternal war, results such as this are inevitable.