Inflating the Cost of Free Speech
“Freedom isn’t free” we have been told by the martially inclined. A good idea of what they meant was presented to the world before the saying ever caught on. 1972 was when the AP ran the Nick Ut photo “Napalmed Girl”. It depicted 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a rural Vietnamese road naked, molten and sobbing. Her village, where US ordnance had just detonated, incinerated in the background. The picture literalized “collateral damage” for anyone rationalizing in newsy abstractions.
In the years since the once-called “police action” in Viet Nam, another cliché started making the rounds: “we have to fight them over there, so we won’t have to over here.” Supposedly, American freedoms remain intact because the military, stealthily abetted by our cloaks and daggers, have been deployed oceans away for over a century. Going by this reasoning, your right to protest against Richard Nixon 50 years ago was paid for by skin off Kim Phuc’s back.
Ut’s photo arrived less than 3 decades after the end of WWII carnage. Mass atrocity and human suffering were things many people had gotten used to. Casualty figures in daily reports became as routine as sports statistics.
During the 80 years between the war and today much ink has been spilled on the role and responsibility of major media. Does any other kind of “non-fiction” narrative contain as many blind spots as when journalists cover journalism? In the 50’s and 60’s boys too young to vote or drink were conscripted to face enemy fire without any declaration of war. The upper ranks of the news corps of the time were known to consort regularly with policy makers in charge of such decisions. Downing heady liquids as they dined, news industry execs could be part of the planning. In general they’ve been spared much blame or credit for global fate post VJ Day.
By the end of the Johnson administration the wisdom of so-called “Wise Men” began to be called out. Students, not media, led the pack. Some of the informing classes came around, eventually. Others still hold that higher standards reigned in the Cronkite age. Is it true? Was it a journalistic era that writers and academics should recall nostalgically? Would reviving it make American news great again?
Functionally literate people are well aware of the litigious accomplishments of the NYT and WP on the question of “prior restraints.” Where those not quite as erudite are concerned, film-land hasn’t neglected the Pentagon Papers case either. What Daniel Ellsberg divulged was vital to public understanding of relations between Washington and Saigon. But official documents don’t necessarily tell the whole story?
What are the chances, for example, that our initial forays into Viet Nam got rolling steam from a third martini poured for Joseph Alsop at Kay Graham’s house? Is it even a question? Coteries like the renowned Georgetown Set still have sway in American policy making. While there is little accounting in published letters for the impact of their influence. It’s considered “conspiratorial” to pry into discussions at secretive conclaves that news industry chieftains attend.
Ut’s iconic image continues to be worth millions of words. It was the South Vietnamese Air force that mistakenly dropped napalm on their own side in Trang Bang that day. But that’s hardly the point. The US provided the ordnance and had been wantonly bombing all over Viet Nam and neighbors for years. There were many other Kim Phucs outstanding who never got the benefit of a camera. Whatever emotions that little girl evoked, the prerogatives of US leadership loom large in the background.
A lot of mainstream media ire has been devoted to giving too wide an audience to voices considered mendacious and unqualified. The remnants of the traditional scribing trade – and “tradecraft” maybe the better word considering historic entanglements with secret agencies — from the pre-internet age have devoted little circumspection to their own foibles, failures and faults. Their relationships with movers and shakers in the most destructive years of US policy, have never been
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
