The food and medicine drops are “not popular with everyone,” ABC's Peter Jennings claimed the evening of October 8 as he decided to highlight how a group “described it today as military propaganda designed to justify the bombing.”
After the lead story on Monday's World News Tonight about the U.S. bombing and food drop operation, Jennings gratuitously added something else he considered newsworthy:
“One other item about these food and medicine drops. They're not popular with everyone. The international relief organization Doctors without Borders, which won the Nobel Peace Prize for relief work, described it today as military propaganda designed to justify the bombing. The Bush Administration points out it also has committed $300 million in other aid. It's a question, ultimately, of getting it there.”
Rather's Closing Remarks
In contrast to the U.S. as the bad guys theme broached by Jennings, CBS's Dan Rather realized October 8 that the war was “forced upon us” as he delivered a patriotic message about accepting the deaths of members of the armed forces and remaining “the land of the free” only so long as we remain “the home of the brave.”
At the end of Monday's hour-long CBS Evening News, Rather exhorted:
After a second wave of U.S. aerial bombardment in the Afghan night, the American mind runs on two tracks: First, our thoughts and our love are with our warrior men and woman, our sons and our daughters, bothers and sisters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers over there. We see them at work and we are reassured by their professionalism and skill. We know some may come back in flag-draped caskets, but we reluctantly and sadly accept that as a reality of a war forced upon us. Less familiar to Americans are concerns of protecting home and hearth here. Our worst fears tell us that the enemy within could strike again. On a day when President Bush swore-in the first Director of Homeland Security in our history, thoughts turn to the words of the late newsman Elmer Davis: “This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.”
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
