Ernie Pyle: Saying Good things About GI's

It seems to me that every time we turn around some reporter from our American elite media digs up a story that absolutely degrades our American troops in Iraq. What bothers me are the little stories that get blown all out of proportion, and which splash mud over every military man and woman serving today. Like the story about a Marine in Faluja who did the right thing in shooting an insurgent, and now ... because of an NBC TV photographer ... all Marines are being painted as insensitive neanderthals. Even worse, middle East television is giving aid and comfort to our enemies by using the story to trash all Americans. It makes one wonder: whatever happened to reporters like World War II's Ernie Pyle? At that time we had celebrity reporters telling us how the big war was going, and we had Ernie Pyle telling us what the everyday GI was doing. We learned they were wonderful young men, the kind we knew them to be back home. We suffered with them in jungles. We landed on beaches, flushed the enemy from caves, cheered when we took an unheard-of hill on an island without a name. We cried with brave men when a comrade died in their arms. At times, we laughed, and at times we were bored stiff just waiting. We learned the devastation of a "Dear John" letter. But most of all, when Ernie Pyle reported, we knew these GIs were Americans ... the kids next door ... and we, and the world, were proud of them. So, I've got to ask: whatever happened to combat reporting like that from Ernie Pyle, who saw American GIs as brave young men and the pride of their country, and who would take you on if you said otherwise. And maybe more important, whatever happened to the media that would regularly give Ernie Pyle top billing?

This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.