Blatchford faults media for believing friendly-fire reports

In a column for the Globe and Mail,
Christie Blatchford writes
that the Canadian media were too quick to
jump on reports that friendly fire had killed four Canadian soldiers.

Blatchford writes: “What’s sobering is that the correct information was there for the taking, or at least for the moderating or ameliorating of the reporting.”

Blatchford quotes two journalists who were there during Operation Medusa on Sept. 3rd, which is when the incident allegedly happened, who reported that the attack was from the Taliban, not the U.S. military. She also points out that a friendly-fire incident that happened the very next day was widely reported – why cover up one and not the other?

“To conclude on the strength of a brief report in the War Logs that the Canadian government and the military had covered up a huge friendly-fire incident, the men who loved those dead soldiers would have had to be in on the conspiracy, would have had to lie and keep on lying when they returned home. A series of respected journalists, including those in the field that day, would all have been fooled or duped. Distinguished commanders also would have to have been in on it.”

She concludes:

“This mess is not a WikiLeaks problem, nor a Canadian military problem, nor a Canadian government problem. It is a problem with the Canadian media – Ottawa-centric, conspiracy-embracing, unquestioning and unskeptical so long as the information seems damaging to the government, too quick to publish and, of course, absolutely without a shred of accountability. Shame on us.”