I forgot to say that Sherman certainly did have reporters pegged. And to think that in those days they didn’t go to journalism schools that pushed Marxism.

Karl Marx wrote a number of articles, some with Engels, on the US Civil War. Considering what Marx wrote about the Civil War, in support of the North, I suspect that Sherman may have tolerated Marx as a reporter.

Which does not contradict rickl’s observation that many reporters theses days are more concerned with using journalism to change society to fit their lefty “idealistic” vision than they are in reporting the news.

Sherman had a way with words. He clearly expressed himself, with no wasted words along the way and with not a little bit of humor.

Here’s another one that fits our approach to war these days.

“Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”

Perhaps another example of better to be lucky than good?

Thought I’d closed the bold tag after ‘agenda journalism’

Sure wish wordpress offered a preview function, I’d still make mistakes, just less of them;-)

I entirely share your opinions on the importance, and need for cordial relations between the military and media. You’re clearly knowledgeable about this issue.

That said, I felt like I was reading a brief, knowledgeable essay on the subject taken from a time capsule buried prior to Vietnam. Where have you been, to at this late date express incredulity, “I am nothing less than aghast at how severely confrontational and severely misinformed they [the media] choose to be.”

With a very few exceptions, the MSM engages solely in the practice of agenda journalism ad has for decades, they are hostile to the military and have, since Vietnam acted as the propaganda arm of the democrat party.

Were they not Americans, we would have long ago declared them enemies of the state.

This assumes that the relationship *can* be positive – that is it assumes that the press at least wishes things to be succesfull. They do not.

You can not make a good relation with someone who wants you to disappear from the face of the earth. There has to be good faith on both sides.

We used embeds in Iraq II also, you probably got some of the best reporting there because of that relationship, however the management back home didn’t want that and dropped most of the stories. It isn’t hard to find embittered embedded journalist that either were heavily edited to say something they didn’t or their stories were refused publication.

The difference is that since the early 90’s the media has had a *really* hard shift in thought (I shudder to think what would have been reported if you had thier current mindset along with no accountability or either Fox News or the blogs).

Heck, they were mostly still semi-willing propaganda spreaders during the first Iraq war. Powell and Schwarzkopf used that to the fullest during the war. It also was one of the things that drove the anti-war crowd into such strong moves into becoming opposition – they realized how much misinformation was given through “access” and decided it would never happen again.

At this point you mostly have two camps in the media. You have th first and most common (and I think McChrystal learned this the hard way) and that is ones that detest the military and even thier “positive” stories are highly negative. They hate it nearly to an extent that simply not saying they all need to die is positive. You then have the Fox news variety that is rating oriented. Given the slant of the rest of the media that tends to push them into “conservative” camps but they really aren’t conservative, they are reactionary – were the rest of the media as conservative as they are liberal Fox would be like CNN.

That leaves good reporting – the kind you *can* build that relationship with – not in the main stream media. By definition if a reporter ever becomes one that the relationship can be worked out then they are shunned and become unemployed “free lance” journalist. They move to blogs and alternative media.

Indeed, the Rolling Stones reporter is confused by the reaction – he thought it a nice article. He did so because compared to what he would have written were he to be “fair” or even “biased” it would have been *really* critical. Nor can he even see this to be true.

Lets face it – how does one write an article on the attempted genocide of Jews in WWII in a way that *isn’t* inherently bad? Many of us can simply state the facts but if you are trying to write an opinion article(which most news is now) how do you do anything other than condemnation?

I could certainly write an article that presents the so called final solution as a neutral position to take, I could even write one that makes it sound like a good thing – yet I do agree that making it even a neutral idea is a VERY positive spin. If you think that there is little to no difference (and in some of their minds worse) between that and what is going on today then what is going on makes sense. It also shows the confusion they have when they write an article that stops short of calling them murderers and people think it is a very negative article.

You aren’t going to court them to your side – McChrystal is a fairly heavy leftist, he was (and maybe even still is, but I doubt it) a heavy supporter of Obama, and was everything the left could have hoped for in a military leader (and made no attempt to hide it). That made him not a bad murderer and he never understood that is how they viewed him.

Contrast that with our modern “peace process”, which is really a recipe for endless war with no conclusion.

Although I’ve been a Northerner all my life, I do somewhat sympathize with the Southern cause of independence, and today I would not support taking up arms against any state that chooses to secede from our out-of-control federal government.

“Enraged by newspaper listings of the Union order of battle prior to engagements, Sherman banished reporters from his lines and referred to them as ‘dirty newspaper scribblers who have the impudence of Satan.’ A reporter for the New York Tribune wrote that being ‘a cat in hell without claws is nothing to [being] a reporter in General Sherman’s army.’ His brethren were not so kind; they circulated reports of Sherman’s alleged insanity.

The tension reached a head when a reporter for the New York Herald, Thomas Knox, defied Sherman’s orders and forwarded an account of the Union defeat at Chickasaw Bluffs. Sherman had Knox arrested and bound over for court-martial. The reporter responded, ‘Of course, General Sherman, I have no feelings against you personally, but you are regarded as the enemy of our set and we must in self-defense write you down.’ The court found Knox guilty and ordered him banished from the theater. As the Herald was a strong supporter of Lincoln, the President countermanded the sentence on the condition that Sherman’s superior, U. S. Grant, agreed. Grant would do no such thing, and Knox was forced to appeal to the man he defamed. Sherman’s reply:

Come with a sword or musket in your hand, prepared to share with us our fate … and I will welcome you as a brother; but come as you now do expecting me to ally the reputation and honor of my country and my fellow-soldiers with you as the representative of the Press which you yourself say makes so slight a difference between truth and falsehood and my answer is Never!

Knox left the theater.”

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBR/is_3_34/ai_n6363980/?tag=content;col1