"I came here to find the truth and report back, something our media seems to be incapable of doing," PJTV reporter Joe the Plumber told an Israel Channel 10 reporter (PJTV screenshot above) the other day.
"It's the authenticity, stupid. I am glad to have been proven correct in blogging that 'Roger L. Simon is a genius' for sending Joe the Plumber 'over there,'" we wrote in feedback to Joe Wurzelbacher's first PajamasTV "Middle East Update" report from Jerusalem and Sderot in southern Israel, where sirens signalling an incoming Hamas missile went off even as JTP was filming, giving reporter and crew and local residents "approximately 10 to 15 seconds to find shelter":
For me it was fear at first and then anger, wanting some type of retribution …
All you've got to do is show up, and you're part of it. It rips people's lives apart, and it's going to be with them the rest of their life, the children … This is the reality of the situation. Missiles are coming from the Gaza Strip and destroying their world.
Re an interview by Israel Channel 10:
They were trying to make me the story to a degree, and the biggest thing I'm trying to explain to the media is I'm not the story … I came here to find the truth and report back, something our media seems to be incapable of doing.
This little interchange says it all:
Channel 10: What kind of story are you looking for here?
JTP: I'm not looking for the story. I'm looking for the truth. You know I don't pretend to be a reporter. I didn't go to journalist school … the media has their agenda, and they're biased in how they report this war … I want to show facts and then let people make up their own opinion, as opposed to the media telling them what to think.
For the larger picture, check out Foreign Policy's "Morning Brief":
Haaretz reports that the Israeli leadership is divided over whether to continue the fighting in Gaza, with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak arguing for ending the operation and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert arguing for continuing. Hamas's leaders also say the group will continue fighting, rejecting a French-Egyptian truce proposal.
FM Livni may be arguing for ending Operation Cast Lead for debatable strategic reasons, but her words explaining why they launched the operation in the first place express the same gut reaction and common sense we heard in Joe Wulzelbacher's report:
Livni said that the current operation in Gaza has proven to Hamas that Israel will always respond to provocation. "Israel is a country that reacts vigorously when its citizens are fired up, which is a good thing," she said. "That is something that Hamas now understands and that is how we are going to react in the future."
As Joe told a Jerusalem Post reporter [via Lucianne] the other day:
"I know if I were a citizen here, I'd be damned upset." He described himself as a "peaceloving man," but added, "when someone hits me, Im going to unload on the boy. And if the rest of the world doesn't understand that, then I'm sorry."
A man after our own heart and mind.
Maybe so-called liberals understand the truth but think they can avoid terrorist devastation here at home if they pretend to admire Islam. Cowards R us.
Posted by: goomp | January 12, 2009 at 12:35 PM
I have absolutely changed my attitude about PJTV since they've made it more easily accessible, and especially since they've sent Joe, neither journalist nor blogger, to give it all a look-see.
What's wrong with just looking, and seeing for oneself? Would that the elite journies could do as much.
Posted by: Joan of Argghh! | January 12, 2009 at 01:18 PM
The problem with "journalism" is that its practitioners have largely become intellectual whores. Anyone who is employed as a regular or as a stringer, who wants to sell his or her wares has to write for the market, or they have no income. Do you think that the US MSM organs would tolerate the kind of objectivity and truth we should expect from JTP? If what is provided by the writers does not fit the approved dialectic, then facts being rather elastic, the official dialog will be maintained in the MSM market.
If you compromise your honor and integrity just to sell the NYT 200 words, then you are a true modern journalist, and the whore epithet fits you.
(I apologize to honest whores everywhere, because at least they admit what they are and, in their market, give value for the money more often than journalists do in theirs.)
Posted by: B Dubya | January 12, 2009 at 02:21 PM
Digging Joe. He should quit trying to say he's not biased. He is, and so what? He's the perfect guy for a blogging outfit...you either get something out of his take, or you click on out of there. I think he's great because most "average Joes" will get a lot out of seeing things through his eyes. That's what we like -- people who we feel would see things as we would telling us about what they're seeing. It's great (so far).
Posted by: Solomon | January 12, 2009 at 10:16 PM
Strangely, it reminds me of the Burger King Whopper Virgin campaign - that is, taking the Whopper to remote locales unfamiliar with either fast food or, even, the hamburger, given the assumption that an untested palate is a more objective palate.
And so we send a civilian simply to observe - and, by the way, make a slight mockery of how seriously journalists often take themselves - which is too seriously, a la Christiane Amanpour.
It also gives a much maligned guy a few extra bucks, and I'm in favor of that. The poor guy didn't ask to be dragged across front pages. Lemons, lemonade.
Posted by: Elizabeth | January 13, 2009 at 02:51 PM