Posted by
Dawnsblood on Monday, January 08, 2007 6:27:53 PM
Andi
was kind enough to point to a
dispatch written by an Air Force wife about the media. She attempts to explain why the media is disliked and mistrusted in the military family community.
During my husband's first deployment to Iraq in 2003, there came a time
when I hadn't heard from him in nearly a week. That day I happened to
see Aaron Brown's news program on CNN. Mr. Brown chose to exhibit a
photograph of an American soldier, dead in a Baghdad gutter. The story
was about casualties that had been suffered that day.My anger was white hot. I could not see straight. How DARE he? How
dare he show this picture for ratings? How dare he flash this picture
around so that the next morning someone would wake up to the chaplain
on their doorstep and wail, "Oh my GOD! That was my beloved I saw dead
on TV last night!" What if that person the chaplain visited was me? I
didn't sleep at all that night, and was downstairs at 5:30 am, sick to
my stomach that there would be a knock on the door at 6.I even wrote Mr. Brown about the situation. His response to me? "With all due respect, I didn't think it was that bad."Of course you didn't, sir. Because it is our family, our loved ones,
and not yours. To you it is just a story. To us, it is our life.