What the media rarely shows
 

Its too bad things like this are constantly overlooked by the media.

You never see things like this in a newspaper... oh... nevermind.

Michael Yon reports that there are only a tiny number of embedded reporters these days, and that the reason is top military brass has shut them down because they are skeptical of the media. Yon says this is a sad situation. Notice the photo credit is military. Not that it's a fake - it surely isn't - but it came from a military photographer and was fed to the press. There's no media there to report anything like this.

I wouldn't allow them in there either. So the only thing they have to report is the # of dead Americans and innocent civilians.

:lol:

they "hate freedom" . . .
 

Would that be to protect the freedom of the press, or to try to influence the news that Americans have access to?

Stanley Motss: I'm in show business, why come to me?
Conrad 'Connie' Brean: War is show business, that's why we're here.

Wag the Dog (1997)

Neither - To simply conduct a militarycampaign without any more innocent idiots getting in the way or giving out information that would cost innocent lives. The press is there looking for an angle or a cool shot to sell papers or mags/whatever. It will also keep them from getting shot and to keep the troops from having to second guess & worry about where these people are or go to rescue them when they are caught by the enemy and paraded and beheaded on TV. Nothing, nothing positive will come from the press being there. They aren't going to prevent anyone from doing anything so forget any watchdog issue.

There's 'feel good' stories all over the media if you're interested in looking. You don't even have to look very hard.

That kind of thinking is pretty twentieth-century. Information now has too many pipelines for a government to reasonably expect to choke off or control -- the classical twentieth-century dictatorship may be called an "information dictatorship" for its use of basically rationing information to the populace. About the only two that are left of this type are Cuba and North Korea. Even the Great Firewall Of China will not prove adequate to its task and will be burned through by the demands and needs of the Chinese populace.

That doesn't mean the Great Firewall of China hasn't slowed things down considerably.

Just one more reason non-democracies are dickheads-in-action, eh?

It is COMPLETELY possible to be a non-democracy and still give your people freedom and have them be happy.

It's only a small fact that this has not, in fact, ever happened.

Um, Liechtenstein. ;)