Spent much of Sunday listening to special D-Day anniversary coverage on XM Satellite Radio's channel 4 (the 40's music channel). Starting at 12:44am, Eastern Time, XM began regularly interrupting its music programs to re-broadcast the original NBC news radio coverage of the Allied invasion of Normandy.
What modern U.S. Iraq war coverage has in common with these vintage WWII news reports is, uh, um... well, they're both in English. That's pretty much it.
The 1944 reports lacked snarky digs at the commander in chief, included no calls for the resignation of military or civilian leaders, and did not endlessly repeat any recent crimes and misdemeanors of U.S. soldiers.
The old coverage tended to focus more on the good news and less on the bad, skipping the horrific details of Omaha beach, for instance. Those details would not likely have been made public at the time, though, so it may be that they were reported in later days or weeks.
Still, the whole tone was different. Journalists back then seemed to think there was one and only one enemy to be defeated: the Axis powers. Today it's no secret that many journalists write as if the Bush administration is their main enemy.
Sixty years from now, I don't think anyone is going to look back on the turn of the 21st century and call it the media's "greatest generation."
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