The author of the controversial Esquire article about 'the shooter' of bin Laden popped up again but this time in an interview on the PBS Newshour.
After the article hit the online Esquire site many started calling out the information within, like Stars and Stripes. And comments like this:
“Misinformation like this doesn’t help veterans,” Brandon Friedman, a former VA public affairs officer, told Stars and Stripes. “When one veteran hears in a high-profile story that another veteran was denied care, it makes him or her less likely to enroll in the VA system.”
By veterans of Afghanistan, Iraq and other military veterans.
From the Newshour interview this caught me by surprise as I didn't know this journalist:
For more on this, story I'm joined by the article's author, Phil Bronstein. He's the executive chairman of the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The article in Esquire clearly shows a total lack of simple, especially related to the Veterans Administration and even DoD made even easier with much more accessible information over the past four years, investigative journalism. Which was the reason for the almost instant corrections by many that just grew since the article was posted, along with the questions about the articles purpose itself.
You can read the original Esquire article, the response to from Stars and Stripes and the response to the Stars and Stripes from Esquire with their updated, easy to get originally, corrections.
You can also now hear in his own words, not after the original was posted and he was interviewed by a few others, answering questions about.
Summary: Ray Suarez talks with journalist Phil Bronstein who wrote an Esquire profile of the Navy SEAL credited with killing Osama bin Laden. Since the SEAL -- known as "the shooter" -- retired from service, but he's been met with significant challenges, or as Bronstein writes, "no landing pad in civilian life."
Watch Navy SEAL Who Killed Bin Laden Faces Insecurity, Challenges on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
Or read the Transcript of.
You can read the Esquire article, the Stars and Stripes response, even search out others, and the Esquire response to Stars and Stripes and the others since the article hit.
I'll let you decide what's going on here and if there's a deep problem, I'm trying to figure out what the original is selling, though as a Vietnam vet I have strong feelings about the reasons.
My questions over the past decade plus, frankly adding to others about many issues, has been about the state of journalism in this country and that opinion is now called news. As to journalism what is a real investigative journalist, as many who really are have been pushed out of the main stream and rarely heard from but with the occasional explosive reports that hit quick then die as quick, opinion takes over as facts and reality, especially on the political scene.
I understand why SEAL Team 6 members, in the raid that killed bin Laden, have been sought out, as a certain recent past CiC stated "mission accomplished" years prematurely. I understand the importance of this ex-SEALs story especially related to a clear history related to 9/11.
Esquire could have written a much better article and much more important as to All Veterans, but so could all of the media outlets, written and spoken, by taking this SEALs story as a Military Veteran now, and his importance in the history, and expanded it into what all Veterans go through after Serving the Country, so many issues, and what is the Responsibility of the Country as to those that Serve and Defend them.
What came with these two wars, why tax cuts to all but especially the already wealthy. By the then congresses and the bush administration, told to the country by bush "to go shopping" as the economy and jobs had already started collapsing with the growth in deficits. Virtually nothing as to the peoples responsibility, the Veterans Administration, were called for let alone that with two more wars the country should Sacrifice as we demand the military and their families to.
It's interesting that the article comes with the Obama SOTU address, reminding us of a not to far back other SOTU and the blatant lie told, from the same that wasn't demanding Sacrifice of the country. Many are calling the most memorial statement ever from any SOTU.
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This one line in President George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address overshadowed all the others, becoming infamously known as the "16 words."
As even Rachel Maddow reminded us last night.
This Esquire journalist, executive chairman of the Center for Investigative Reporting, should write or oversee an article about how the country wasn't asked to Sacrifice while being lied to and abandoning the main missions of why the military was sent into that region, how the Veterans Administration has been under funded for decades, since Korea, but especially the last decade plus, and how much more it costs to correct problems from that long under funding. How the wars have yet to be paid for, and all related costs to wage the policies that surrounded them including the damaged National Security. But especially as to the results of and what the country that waves flags, has welcome homes now, even for us Vietnam vets 40plus years later, puts on parades occasionally, owes to those that serve it! And not only Esquire!
Esquire does have another article up 'The Shooter' On the Hill and you can bet that those he's meeting with in Congress will once again miss the bigger point!
Long, way too long, overdue!
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