Tuesday brought the sad news Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and local journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova were killed covering the war in Ukraine. As part of the coverage on MSNBC's Deadline: White House, liberal host Nicolle Wallace and journalist Sebastian Junger covered what they considered an important angle to the story and person who supposedly ties it all together: Donald Trump.
The segment started out well enough with the bravery of war correspondents. Wallace first wondered: “We're so dependent on them, we depend on them for everything that we know. And—and-- as I said, everything that we have covered over the last two weeks is dependent on when those journalists, Richard Engel and Cal Perry, need to sleep, when they're available to tell us what they're seeing. Your thoughts about how indispensable that work is and feels to the journalists themselves, why they do it?
Junger touted the importance of journalism as, “[t]here is no free society, there is no democracy, and probably could be no peace without the free flow of information, without journalists.” But then, things took a sharp turn into the absurd:
And, you know, I think it — it — it's illuminating to look at who takes that sentiment to the next level and actually kills journalists. It’s illuminating to consider, who you, if you believe that, who you’re in bed with. You know, you are — you are — in bed with Vladimir Putin, with Saudi Arabia, it’s — with ISIS. That’s where that sentiment leads and — and — its toxic in this country and, you know, very clearly, right now, freedom of the world depends on what happens in Ukraine and we depend on journalists to know what's happening there, so our government can make good decisions. So, you know, let's — let’s — set our house if order in that sense. We will help ourselves and the world enormously if we do.
Wallace followed up by elaborating, “And obviously, he — he — was unnamed by you, I’ll — I’ll — be the spoiler alert here, Donald Trump famously called journalists the enemy of the people. The editor of The New York Times went to see him and made the case that it endangers not journalists here, exclusively, but to your point, journalists around the world that don't operate in a free society.”
War correspondents are incredibly brave and, contrary to media behavior during the Trump years, those reporters actually put their lives on the line to bring the news, but they are absolutely not comparable to the partisan talking heads who appear on MSNBC. Criticizing people who work in the safety of a New York or Washington office does not make one a Putin or ISIS enabler. As despicable as Wallace and Junger’s comments were, they were hardly alone in politicizing Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova’s deaths.
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Here is a transcript of the March 15 show:
MSNBC's Deadline: White House
03/15/2022
4:41 AM ETNICOLLE WALLACE: Yeah. We're so dependent on them, we depend on them for everything that we know. And — and — as I said, everything that we have covered over the last two weeks is dependent on when those journalists, Richard Engel and Cal Perry, need to sleep, when they're available to tell us what they're seeing. Your thoughts about how indispensable that work is and feels to the journalists themselves, why they do it?
SEBASTIAN JUNGER: There is no free society, there is no democracy, and probably could be no peace without the free flow of information, without journalists. And, you know, in the last few years in this country, it's been an appealing for some people to call journalists the enemy of the people. And, you know, I think it — it — it's illuminating to look at who takes that sentiment to the next level and actually kills journalists. It’s illuminating to consider, who you, if you believe that, who you’re in bed with. You know, you are — you are — in bed with Vladimir Putin, with Saudi Arabia, it’s — with ISIS. That’s where that sentiment leads and — and — its toxic in this country and, you know, very clearly, right now, freedom of the world depends on what happens in Ukraine and we depend on journalists to know what's happening there, so our government can make good decisions. So, you know, let's — let’s — set our house if order in that sense. We will help ourselves and the world enormously if we do.
WALLACE: And obviously, he — he — was unnamed by you, I’ll — I’ll — be the spoiler alert here, Donald Trump famously called journalists the enemy of the people. The editor of The New York Times went to see him and made the case that it endangers not journalists here, exclusively, but to your point, journalists around the world that don't operate in a free society and — and — I wonder your thoughts about this exodus. I mean, the New York Times emptied out their Moscow bureau, CNN did the same, the BBC, Bloomberg. What does that usher in?
