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Bernard Goldberg Was Right
Guest Column | By Carol A. Taber | January 1, 2008
Accusing Smith of not properly attributing sources in his blogging doesn’t bother him. “Frankly, I should have,” Smith concedes.
Recently, conservative writer and former National Review Online contributor W. Thomas Smith, Jr., was attacked in the blogosphere and media for his NRO blogging while he was in Lebanon. The attacks against him were not only baseless, but because the reaction to them was so appalling and shameful to our business, almost in too many ways to elaborate fully here, I'm moved to comment on the whole grisly affair.
At the extreme, Smith was accused of lying about stories that no one else uncovered or reported in Lebanon. He is said to have lied, yet the evidence given to that charge was that no one else reported what Smith did, nor were they even aware of the events he reported. So how does that make Smith a "liar"? In fact, there is absolutely no evidence, much less any sliver of proof, that Smith lied about anything. On the contrary, Lebanon experts like Tom Harb and John Hajjar, both senior officials with the International Lebanese Committee for United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, contend Smith dared to report the absolute truth that no other reporter in that country had the guts to report or the skill to uncover.
Smith did not, in two cases, detail what he was actually witnessing versus what he was learning from various sources. But he never said he saw something when he did not, and what he wrote were short briefs IN A BLOG; he was not writing news features. Who provides footnotes and meticulous sourcing in a blog, otherwise known as a frequently updated online journal/diary? Almost no one...until now.
To examine closely what happened – what Smith actually wrote in his blog entries while in Lebanon, and what has since been said in the Left wing blogosphere about those entries and why – simply defies reason. And it has reinforced several things in my mind about both liberals and conservatives.
1) Although this has been covered extensively in the media, I have to say I agree that the liberal – progressive -- movement in this country has been hijacked by an amorality that is among the most profane in American history. Anything goes. Anything can be said and repeated over and over about another person regardless of the truth or consequences for that person. Any human being's career, reputation, family and life can be sacrificed if that person opposes the Left and its agenda. No trial. No hearing…just vitriol and wild-eyed, abusive condemnation regardless of injury to the accused. All for the cause: the furtherance of the Left's agenda, its religion. That this new media form has been hijacked for this sort of anarchic perversion is a very sad turn of events for all of us; it is Lord of the Flies revisited.
2) The conservative movement is so faint-hearted, most of them will not properly defend an embattled colleague. They will quickly sacrifice a colleague, or attempt to distance themselves from him or her, for the sake of appearing squeaky clean and avoiding any risk of attacks by the profane Left. It is shades of what was done to Sen. Trent Lott for paying tribute to Sen. Strom Thurmond at Thurmond's 100th birthday party - the idea that it is safer and easier for the Right to collapse by "throwing someone under the bus," putting a band-aid on the infectious Left - this apparently also was done to Smith. Author and media analyst Bernard Goldberg said it best in the title of his book: "Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve."
3) Looking with a critical eye at all of this, from Smith's reporting to the criticism of that reporting, the far more likely scenario - and the one with which Harb, Hajjar, and others concur - is that Smith had far greater access in Lebanon than other reporters. He got too close to Hezbollah. He made discoveries about who is, and who is not, in bed with Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria. And because of that, the decision was made that he had to be destroyed in the public eye.
In fact, Gen. Michel Sleiman (the pro-Syrian, pro-Hezbollah commander-in-chief of the Lebanese armed forces) purportedly made two international phone calls to the U.S. personally inquiring why Smith was not writing favorable things about him. According to Lebanese sources, these calls were made days before a correspondent for the New Republic (a Left wing magazine under fire for actual lies on the part of its "Baghdad Diarist") first wrote at the controversial Huffington Post about Smith's blogging.
Smith interviewed Sleiman at length while in Lebanon, and Sleiman may well be the next president of Lebanon; yet he was unnerved enough by Smith to make two personal, international calls contesting that one reporter's coverage of him. What did Smith know? Apparently, far more than Hezbollah and even the Lebanese Ministry of Defense wanted him to know.
Accusing Smith of not properly attributing sources in his blogging doesn't bother him. "Frankly, I should have," Smith concedes. "Considering the power and influence of blogs, we all should." But accusing him of lying, misquoting him, and making up stories about him, is far more serious. Truth is everything to Smith. It defines him. And those who have accused him of untruths have lied in their accusations - but don't take my word for it: read what Smith wrote, then read what some of his attackers from the Left claimed he wrote.
Smith has survived the onslaught against him while his compatriots did not rise to defend him, which makes him even more of a hero, as others have already said. But what will not survive, however sadly, is a decency and an integrity that used to be hallmarks of our free press and the people who earned their living within it. Our country was built as a nation of free men and women whom we believed we could trust to manage themselves within the law and standards of decency; this is what made us the successful democracy we are today.
But if this crumbles - as it seems to be doing right under our eyes – and if we fail to uphold our standards and values for future generations, as Tony Blair once said, what kind of society do we leave behind? And what, therefore, will this generation's legacy be?
I shudder to think.
The original article can be found at http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/
Carol A. Taber is president of FamilySecrityMatters.org, dedicated to providing American citizens with fact-based information on all issues related to national security.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
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