The Parable of the Journalist and the Sniper

Today in Pressthink , Jay Rosen offers what is probably an apocryphal tale about a journalist accepting the invitation of a Bosnian-Serb sniper to "see for yourself what they do." Then the sniper has the journalist look through his sniper scope:

He sees two people who think they are out of range standing in an alley, completely vulnerable. That is when the sniper, retaking the lens, says: which one, left or right?

This alarms the reporter. "I have no answer to that," he says. "I didn't come to be involved in what you do." The sniper throws back his head to laugh, and returns to his rifle. There is a pause. In two quick bursts he kills both people just seen through the lens.

"You should have answered," the sniper says to the Western correspondent. "You could have saved one."

Rosen has raised an interesting question, how much does the journalist share in the evil that the sniper has committed? The answer, of course is that he doesn't. Rosen's long subsequent discourse on the complicity of evil and the ethics of the situation, whether the journalist should have accepted the invitation or not, whether it's proper to show video footage obtained, etc. is one long red herring. The whole episode is just another variation on the "see what you made me do" extortion ploy. The terrorist says, "If you don't withdraw your country's troops, we'll have to behead this hostage." The troops are not withdrawn, the hostage is beheaded, and the terrorist says, "See what you made me do?" Well, no, he chose to commit that barbaric act.

This is one of the more interesting discussions I've seen Rosen provoke, and it serves very well to highlight the typically leftist themes of moral relativism vs. conservative concepts of evil as a conscious choice for which the individual bears responsibility.

I won't get into the clumsy segue to a discussion of CNN's "cosmopolitan" nature as an excuse for it to operate "above nations", thus excusing Eason Jordan's indiscretions, other than to say that there's nothing inherently admirable about considering one's self or organization above the law and outside national boundaries. Pirates and other outlaws certainly consider themselves as such.