Pitts' story

Via Romenesko, I found a free link to Pitts' story.

'Hillbilly armor' protects 278th
By Edward Lee Pitts
Military Affairs

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait -- Members of the 278th Regimental Combat Team on Wednesday brought their concerns about a lack of armor for vehicles soon heading into Iraq directly to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The 278th's Spc. Thomas "Jerry" Wilson, 31, of Ringgold, Ga., asked Mr. Rumsfeld why, after nearly two years of war, soldiers are having to scrounge for rusted metal to weld onto vehicles heading into hostile Iraq.

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" Spc. Wilson asked.

The roar of cheers and "hooahs" from soldiers gathered here for a question-and-answer session forced Mr. Rumsfeld to ask Spc. Wilson to repeat his inquiry. Then Mr. Rumsfeld responded that the goal of the Army remains to get as many armored vehicles as possible to the front-line troops.
...
After the session ended, and while hundreds of troops crowded around Mr. Rumsfeld to take pictures and shake his hand, Spc. Wilson said Mr. Rumsfeld answered a lot of the questions like a politician.

"He beat around the bush a lot," Spc. Wilson said. "The secretary must be misinformed. It sounds like he's been told we are cranking out the armor and have all the vehicles we need, when actually we are digging through landfills."

I really don't see how anyone can call this honest reporting. To encourage a soldier to ask an aggressive, pointed question to a cabinet secretary, and then write about the exchange without disclosing your role in it...?

Even if -- if -- Spc. Wilson would have asked that question anyways, it was still dishonest of Pitts to try and change the course of events without disclosing his role.

"You absolutely have to spell that out," Rem Rieder, editor of the American Journalism Review, tells the Tennessean. "Not doing so gives a really misleading picture of how this took place."

To say the least...