The Victor Reporter Writes the History

Craig Henry makes a great point:

My question is, how many J-schools focus on what went right and wrong with war reporting in SE Asia? Do any of them discuss how the military victory of Tet '68 was portrayed as a military defeat for the US and why this mistake was made? Do any of them remind students that it was an armored blitzkrieg from NV, not a peasant uprising which doomed Saigon in 1975?

I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of journalism professors continue to believe that Tet was a defeat. More broadly, I don't know that I've ever heard of journalism schools' performing that sort of analysis — although some probably do in certain courses.

Beyond the process of (and building a career in) journalism, most of what one hears has to do with the "ethics of journalism." You know, the sort of would-you-tell-the-soldiers- that-they're-about-to-be-slaughtered kind of ethics.