The U.K. Press and A History of Failed Journalism

The tragic death of Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove has had one positive spin-off: it has given the British press a chance to dust off the old clichés about the US military, which have lain idle since the last good “incompetent gung-ho cowboy yanks shooting up our boys” incident during the opening days of the invasion of Iraq. It’s especially timely since the high casualties expected to accompany the summer fighting season have failed to materialize, and continual editorials lamenting our seemingly endless commitment to an un-winnable war are redundant now that the new coalition government has announced that British troops won’t be there in strength beyond 2015 (stand by, however, for the “Why are we cutting and running/ Was it all in vain?” memes to be deployed as the situation, and reader appetite, require).

Some of the most interesting coverage of the failed – sorry “bungled” – Norgrove mission -has come from the schizophrenic Daily Telegraph. While the more liberally-inclined sectors of the UK press take a consistently skeptical tone in their reporting on the US, the ostensibly conservative Telegraph finds itself in a difficult position: ideologically inclined to support the beacon of global capitalism, and enthusiastic in the championing of individual liberty over the nanny state, pro-Americanism should be a gut reflex to the Telegraph. Yet stories continue to appear which are apparently written by some grumpy hack in a basement who came of age in World War Two when the yanks were “overpaid, over-sexed and over here,” and cut his teeth reporting President Eisenhower supposedly stabbing British Prime Minister Anthony Eden in the back over the 1956 Suez fiasco. And it is this latter tone that is wont to manifest itself when the US military screws up – sorry “cocks up, old chap” – and the Telegraph pounces.

Unfortunately, haste to scramble onto the departing media bandwagon of outrage, doesn’t make for the best of journalism. Take the headline “Linda Norgrove: the US military and a history of failed missions” (sub-head: “Failed special forces rescue missions and allegations of covering up friendly fire deaths have dogged the US military for decades”). You can almost hear the gears whirring up to speed, then grinding to a halt, in “chief reporter” Gordon Rayner’s head as he starts to pen a slick review of failed US special forces rescue missions analogous to the Norgrove case, only to find that, er, there’s only one… The 2005 death of British bodyguard David Addison, who was killed by his Taliban captors as US special forces stormed the compound where he was being held.

Not to worry though: Rayner just decides to lump in “friendly fire” deaths for a bit of padding (though the deaths of Miss Norgrove and Mr. Green were actually cases of collateral damage, not “friendly fire,” which is a term used to describe the deliberate, but mistaken, engagement of one’s own troops or allies). So author deftly switches from hostage rescues to war in general, bringing up the case of Pat Tillman, a US army Ranger “…killed by fellow US soldiers in Iraq in 2004.” Now, while technically the Rangers fall under the ambit of US Special Operations Command, they are not special forces in the sense that the term is conventionally understood: they are parachute-trained light infantry. It’s unlikely, however, that the writer would have stumbled into this distinction, judging by the fact that he couldn’t even get the war in which Tillman died right: Rayner states that the ranger was killed in Iraq, but in fact he died during a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan.

Then, bewilderingly, Rayner moves on to the successful US special forces’ rescue of captured POW – not hostage – Jessica Lynch. This story makes it into the article because the Pentagon allegedly “over-exaggerated” her heroism… Oh. Nothing to do, then, with the actual rescue mission, failed or otherwise. Or special forces. Or friendly fire… So is the article really just about anything the US military has done, ever, that hasn’t turned out all that well? Apparently so, since Rayner continues with his stream-of-consciousness approach, by taking his by now no-doubt disorientated readers on a trip down memory lane, to 1980 and the aborted Eagle Claw attempt to rescue the US hostages in Tehran; this must be to help justify his excitable claim that such incidents have “… dogged the US military for decades” (although all his tenuous examples were from the current decade: the 1990s and the vast bulk of the 1980s seem to have been botch-free). In the Operation Eagle Claw tragedy, there was no friendly fire – no firing at all actually, as the crash between a helicopter and a C-130 transport occurred at a desert rendezvous far from where the rescue mission was to be staged. But by now who cares? Rayner has cast his net so wide as to render his article meaningless.

Perhaps the Telegraph’s gratuitous attempt to smear the US military is a knock on effect from its coverage of the Iraq war, which was tainted by the fact the Britain’s commitment to that war was led by Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. Perhaps it’s just lingering post-imperial envy. Or maybe it’s just another example of the journalistic trait of writing to fit a popular pre-existing narrative, rather than doing the hard work of finding an original take on a story.