What's your definition of weak reporting? Mine is: something that regurgitates old news, doesn't add anything new to the common discussion, is relatively void of original insight, and where the actual writing and interviewing don't rise above ordinary or pedestrian. Even better? Take such a dispassionate view of your subjects that you can't even rise to the level of common concern as a reporter. Oprah famously left broadcasting because she overempathized with her subjects; but most reporters know how to convey a modicum of concern for their subjects without getting maudlin. It's part of what draws you in as a reader and makes you care. Not so with the New York Times today. They've managed to offend on all fronts, creating something much more on a par with what you'd expect from a fairly cheesy local paper, than the most famous newspaper in America. And it's especially a letdown coming so soon after some other, truly great writing about PTSD and veterans in GQ.
There's been some excellent reporting lately on the plight of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with combat trauma/PTSD. The Washington Post, NPR, the McClatchy Newspapers, the Hartford Courant, the Boston Globe, even the Cloquet, Minnesota Pine Journal have all had some. But the New York Times, ahhh...no. Not if this entry is any indication.
Today's feature story on, essentially, Killings on the Homefront -- that's the name of the slideshow that accompanies it, heck of a title -- also known as "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles," (speaking of lame...), totally qualifies. That article, by Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez, by the time it was reprinted in full overseas in the International Herald Tribune had become the even more salacious, and inaccurate "Iraq Veterans Leave a Trail of Death and Heartbreak in the U.S." Geebus. Where do we even begin? There are so many ways the NYT, and particularly reporter Deborah Sontag, jumped the shark on this one.
They tell a tale two years two late. They tell a tale that others have been telling for a while. They go nowhere below the surface -- regurgitating what's been in print elsewhere, with no truly original insight or anything new or unusual or worthwhile to add to the discussion. Their math is questionable, and their reporting is frankly, weak. The audio file chooses to accompany the article is particularly weak. The questions Deborah Sontag asks Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D., a well-known and frequently acknowledged expert on PTSD and the military, are just unbelievably ordinary and betray no more than surface awareness of who he is and what he's contributed to veterans over the years. If Jonathan Shay wasn't rolling his eyes at the mediocre effort being put forth to question him, he must be an extremely nice, forgiving guy. High school journalists with a sincere interest in the subject could have done a better job.
What do we "learn"? That Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, in the throes of PTSD or alleged PTSD, have been known to harm themselves or others (well, the focus in this article is specifically on harming "others".) Tell us something we don't know...But since this is old news, very old news, we wonder what drives the New York Times to publish it now? Let's hope it's not the link with the news from Camp Lejeune, about the pregnant Marine allegedly murdered by her fellow Marine rapist. In that case, neither of the parties had even been to war. The timing on publishing the first in the series of articles is certainly strange...almost as though the "War Torn" series was done, and in the can, and just waiting for some tangentially-related news story to bring it out. This wasn't it. (Are they just peeved that they've published so little of importance on the subject, vis-a-vis other major newspapers, and had to just get something into print to save face?)
There is plenty of good reporting on the general subject. All of the papers listed above have done great, and original, work. Even the Norfolk County D.A.'s office in Massachusetts publishes a great video that's available on YouTube, that talks about some of the difficulties vets with PTSD have in fitting back in to society. It's worth watching. One telling comment, and it comes from Jonathan Shay, is that he doesn't necessarily believe that a vet's PTSD should give him a free pass where trouble with the law is concerned. Interesting. If anyone could have an opinion on that topic that would be worth listening to, given the number of years he's thought about the subject, and worked with counseling vets, his would be it. But he says he's on the fence about it, and certainly doesn't recommend it. Thinks it's an awfully complex topic, and personally stays away from being an expert witness in criminal trials, for that very reason.
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More interesting stuff, way further back in the archives from the New York Times, is the following. "Crime Wave Not Due to War Veterans," from December 5, 1921. (That's where our graphic is from, above.) This is a seriously wacky article, but nonetheless makes the point: "Dr. Frank Christion, Superintendent of the Elmira Reformatory, has just completed a study of ex-service men coming out of the World War [WW I], and in a report made to the State Commission of Prisons, he dissipates [I think they mean, dispels] a widely-accepted notion that many of the crimes of violence which have been committed since the close of the war have been by ex-service men and due to their war experience." He notes, "More than half of this group [criminals] were delinquents before they entered the service. Delinquency was not caused by Army training." You definitely have to take that article, and Dr. Christion's pronouncements with a grain of salt -- read the article if you're curious, and you'll quickly see why. It's very dated and unscientific -- there are some [unintentionally] hilarious "medical opinions" about whiners and the spineless that would just be so completely non-PC today. But, it's an interesting commentary on the topic, nonetheless. And the headline pretty much carries the day...
More interesting and relevant is another item from the NYT archives, on "Vietnam Veterans, U.S. Crime and Prison," from July 15, 1982. (All of this stuff is online now -- how very cool.) That last piece is so interesting. It's about a documentary that was shown on tv at the time, called Vietnam Requiem. The documentary is still in print, somewhere, but not readily available. In its time, the George Peabody award from Public Broadcasting, as well as the Special Merit Award, from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Here's something about it from the old New York Times piece:
The subject [of the documentary] is the Vietnam War combat veteran who has since been imprisoned for committing violent crimes. We are told that combat veterans have been arrested at a rate that is almost twice that of nonveterans of the same age. And a Veterans' Administration study concludes that the greater a veteran's exposure to combat the more likely is his chance of being arrested or convicted.
Okay -- that's plenty interesting. And if true, we should be expecting the same general statistics from our veterans today. Here's more development on that theme, though:
The film conducts separate interviews with five men currently serving prison terms. None had a criminal record prior to his military experience. ... They do not discuss the crimes they committed. They simply sit before an almost rigid camera ... and talk about their war experiences.
The profiles are constructed in chronological order. The men talk about what made them join the Army or the Marines: part of a family tradition, liking the uniform, simple idealism. Their talk is interspersed with film and television clips from the period. There are the nightly news reports with the regular death counts. There are the war protesters at home. There is the war itself coming into the living rooms of America.
But being in the thick of combat turned out to be a horror, according to the candid comments of these five men. The narration makes an interesting point: ''During World War II, the Sixth Marine Regiment served four years in the Pacific but only engaged the enemy for about six weeks. In Vietnam, the combat soldier typically served a 12-month tour of duty but was exposed to hostile fire almost every day of his tour.''
In each of the cases on this program, there was a traumatic incident involving the gory death of a buddy. This in turn sometimes resulted in the infuriated friend venting his rage on innocent Vietnamese bystanders. The men are still shaken by powerful emotions as they tell their stories. Albert (Peewee) Dobbs, former Army sergeant, is especially articulate about his experiences: ''You're 18 years old and you're wearing somebody's brains around your shirt because they got their head blown off right next to you, and that's not supposed to affect you. I can never understand that.'' Mr. Dobbs is serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence in a Louisiana correction center for attempted armed robbery.
Returning home to a country that was not overly happy about losing the Vietnam War, the veterans found few welcoming celebrations, and they soon found themselves succumbing to nightmares, alcoholism and various forms of personal violence. All five interviewed for ''Vietnam Requiem'' were decorated for bravery. All five are understandably bitter about what happened to their lives.
[The documentary filmmakers] have certainly created a powerful document. But questions can be raised. The fact remains that the great majority of the veterans who saw combat in Vietnam have never been arrested. What are the differences between the two groups? And the phenomenon of ''post-traumatic stress disorder,'' or shell shock, is hardly new. It also afflicted World War II veterans, no matter how warmly they were greeted back home as heroes. It would be perhaps illuminating to know how many of those combat veterans ended up being arrested and convicted.
Indeed. But the surface-shallow reporting done by the New York Times in the beginning of their "War Torn" series isn't what we're looking for. What we need is a longterm, retrospective study of veterans by war who suffered combat trauma, and what their outcomes were. And we also need to give special consideration to the concept broached by "Vietnam Requiem," above: that if the VA did its own study, that concluded that the "greater a veteran's exposure to combat the more likely is his chance of being arrested or convicted," then how exactly are our veterans going to fare, who have been asked to serve excruciatingly long deployments, or back-to-back, multiple tours? It can't be good. So, rather than taking the New York Times way out, and essentially, blaming the veterans, and throwing oil on the fire, let's figure out what we can expect the repercussions to be of serving long and frequent deployments, and what we as a nation can do to help combat veterans cope with what they've experienced.
It certainly seems we're losing the lessons from our history here: and with so much journalism (and blogging) shining attention on the plight of combat vets with PTSD, we hardly need anything that contributes so little, as the New York Times piece did. All the NYT piece did was ad to the image problem of combat veterans. The moniker in the 70s was "babykiller," and it took a lot to live that down. We seriously don't need irresponsible journalism in the most famous newspaper in America adding to the problem. If they can't do good work on this topic, just don't bother -- there are enough others who are, and right now they're just doing a dis-service to the topic, and to the veterans. Highlight the need for help, like the Washington Post has done. Call for the government to fund care for injured troops and their families. But don't create some highly transparent image of veterans -- what did the International Herald Tribune call their republication of the NYT piece? -- leaving "a trail of death and heartbreak in the U.S." Please...for veterans and readers...do a better job than this.
