From Iraq to Ukraine, the American press loves a war

Indeed, in old-guard media outlets and press conferences alike, journalists have taken a hawkish turn. Substack columnist Adam Johnson put out an article this week titled “Attacking Democrats From the Right: The Faux Adversarial Sweet Spot for U.S. Journalists,” having compiled numerous recent examples of the conflict-hungry press. Among them: Richard Engel of NBC News calling the Afghanistan withdrawal the “worst capitulation of Western values in our lifetimes”; CNN’s Jim Sciutto asking a State Department spokesperson why the U.S. wouldn’t “shoot down the [Russian] planes that are bombing hospitals”; The New York Times’ Peter Baker including a comment from a Raytheon board member as an example of someone opposing the Afghanistan withdrawal and later lamenting that “Biden saw no middle ground in Afghanistan between ending the war or endless escalation.”

These instincts inevitably tinge mainstream coverage of conflicts, the public sentiment it provokes, and the questions lobbed toward press officials in the highest political settings, as this week’s Ukraine briefing shows. “It’s a time for tough questions, Peabody-baiting TV coverage, mugging about innocent life, and the need to ‘act’ ‘now’ to ‘protect civilians,'” writes Johnson, “all of which just so happens to track with the forces of increased militarism.”