Josh Rushing on Fox News

August 1, 2007

You may not remember the name Josh Rushing, but I suspect you’ve seen him. He’s the Marine Captain who served as the press officer for Centcom at the start of the war. He became nationally known after his appearance in Control Room, a documentary that featured Rushing answering questions in a candid, earnest way about the West, the Middle East, and the war.

Rushing, whom you might have also seen on The Daily Show a few weeks ago, made the transition from Marine to correspondent for Al Jazeera English, and talked to CBS News’ Matthew Felling about his work and experiences. The whole interview is worth reading, but I wanted to draw attention to Rushing’s take on Fox News’ coverage of the war. (thanks to reader D.K. for the heads-up)

“When I would go out and give reasons why we were going to invade Iraq, having been given the messages from a Republican operative that was my boss, he would give me the theme of the day. Sometimes it would be ‘WMD,’ others it would be ‘regime change’ and others it would be ‘ties to terrorism.’ I would go out to a Fox reporter and they would say ‘Are there any messages you want to get across before we get to the live interview?’ And we would script the interview around the government messaging, and they would thank me for my service at the end of it. […]

“Fox likes personalities, and Geraldo Rivera covered the war on my TV and was giving away future troop movements by drawing a map in the sand.”

Wait, it gets worse.

“There was another case where a Fox reporter was reporting live from in front of an Abrams tank that was on fire. The conventional wisdom was that Abrams tanks were impervious to the technology that the fedayeen had, small arms. But it turns out that if you did hit an Abrams tank in a certain spot with a rocket-propelled grenade, you could stop it and destroy it. So the Fox correspondent is reporting that, live on television: where the weak spot is and how this must have happened. Anyone watching that stuff, Iraqi intelligence officials, fedayeen soldiers — and we know they were watching it — would be like ‘great, next time I see an Abrams, I’m gonna save my shot until I see the money shot and aim for the vulnerable spot I saw on TV. Thank you, Fox News.’ Or anyone being watching the live report from Geraldo — where he’s drawing the map in the sand — could say ‘great, I know where coming and they’re bringing Geraldo with them.’ There’s a danger in that.

“And the thing is, Fox likes to see themselves as so pro-military and patriotic and they like to share their knowledge, like they’re one of the guys. It’s also interesting to note now how little Fox covers the war. MSNBC covered the war three times as much as Fox, I think in June. You’ve got to be kidding me. The number one cheerleader for this war is now just leaving it behind?”

We knew this, of course, but I liked the way Rushing put it.

I think what’s striking is that his boss is a “Republican operative”, and how willingly the story was sculpted to fit this operative’s PR. I mean, their press liaison thinks it’s BS, the reporter thinks it’s BS… the only people who are supposed to believe this crap is the American public.

Playing dumb, not getting played.

  • I think it’s long past time to dispense with the notion that Fox is in any way providing “news;” in fact, to call what they do “news” lowers a bar that can’t get much lower without being underground.

    It can’t have escaped people’s notice that Fox, like the administration, has deemed itself pro-military, and pro-troops, but at every turn has done little more than undermine them. In the administration’s case, they have failed to properly equip them, failed to properly plan, failed to properly support those who have returned home with significant injuries, failed to properly fund veterans’ care, and on and on and on.

    Fox News has failed the military by their actions like those described by Felling, and by providing little more than propaganda to its viewers, with the result that there are still way too many people who think Saddam not only had WMD, but was behind the attacks of 9/11.

    Perhaps they should think about being the Conservative-Fundamentalist-Right-Wing-News Network instead; at least that way, people ould know what they were getting.

  • Man, I did not know about the Abrams tank thing. During WWII (which this Admin likes to evoke) that sort of thing would have got you a quick trial for treason. There is no way a jury would believe the guy was anything other than a spy.

    Has anyone seen that reporter recently?

  • Of course they are leaving it behind. This is just a part of the larger military/defense picture that they (and the GOP) portray.

    Both use the military and like to look tough. However, when it comes to the heavy lifting, hard work, and most importantly dealing with the messy and unfortunate reality, it’s someone else’s problem. Worse, when things don’t go their way and even they can’t spin it or use it to their advantage, they pretend it’s not the big frickin’ elephant sitting on the sofa in the middle of the living room.

    They like the tough guys in movies – John Wayne characters – forgetting that is character not someone real. Real heroes are more one that just two dimensional. They are are messy and imperfect. Their stories are more complicated and nuanced. Fox and the GOP don’t do nuance and messy, they like simple and easy stories that make them look and feel good.

  • Perhaps they should think about being the Conservative-Fundamentalist-Right-Wing-News Network […] — Anne, @2

    RPN — Rightwing Propaganda Network.

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