Mainstream media accountable to no one

Mainstream media accountable to no one
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
February 5, 2013

The only time mainstream media mentions PTSD or our veterans, it follows a terrible story like what happened to Chris Kyle. Where were they all these years? They have been too busy reporting on President Obama skeet shooting and Beyonce.

In 2008 I was about as angry as I thought I could be. I was wrong. Five years later as military and veteran suicides have gone up, I sit here everyday, post their stories and wonder why people pay good money to support mainstream media.

Mainstream media
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mainstream media (MSM) are those media disseminated via the largest distribution channels, which therefore represent what the majority of media consumers are likely to encounter. The term also denotes those media generally reflective of the prevailing currents of thought, influence, or activity.

Large news conglomerates, including newspapers and broadcast media, which underwent successive mergers in the U.S. and elsewhere at an increasing rate beginning in the 1990s, are often referenced by the term. This concentration of media ownership has raised concerns of a homogenization of viewpoints presented to news consumers. Consequently, the term mainstream media has been widely used in conversation and the blogosphere, often in oppositional, pejorative, or dismissive senses, in discussion of the mass media and media bias.

Media organizations such as CBS and the New York Times set the tone for other smaller news organizations by creating conversations which cascade down to the smaller news organizations lacking the resources to do more individual research and coverage, that primary method being through the Associated Press where many news organizations get their news. This results in a recycling effect wherein organic thought is left to the mainstream that choose the conversation and smaller organizations recite absent of a variance in perspective.

In 2001 when I finished my book For the Love of Jack, I was stupid enough to think that if people knew what I knew, then they would demand change for the sake of the men and women serving in Afghanistan. The troops were not in Iraq yet. If they got their act together they would have trauma specialists deployed with the troops to address what they went through and prevent the majority of PTSD cases, thereby preventing many of the suicides connected to PTSD.

Civilians had been doing that across the country when major traumatic events happen including the attacks of September 11 when specialists rushed into New York and Washington DC.

When I watch TV news, I am stunned by how little the "reporters" actually know about PTSD. They don't seem to understand there is a huge difference between the type of PTSD civilians get and the type of PTSD members of the military suffer from anymore than they seem to understand that just because the term is new to them, it has been studied for over 40 years and reported under different titles since wars began. Hell, it is even in the Bible!

So I sit here this morning while thinking about last night and how the coverage suddenly spread over all the mainstream media outlets since Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield were murdered at a gun range while trying to help a PTSD veteran.

Veteran in sniper killing talked of having PTSD
By Angela K. Brown and Jamie Stengle
The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Feb 4, 2013

FORT WORTH, Texas — The Iraq war veteran and Marine reservist charged with killing a former Navy SEAL sniper and his friend on a Texas shooting range had been taken to a mental hospital twice in the past five months and told authorities he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, police records show.

Cpl. Eddie Ray Routh, 25, also told his sister and brother-in-law after the shootings that he “traded his soul for a new truck,” according to an Erath County arrest warrant affidavit obtained by WFAA-TV. Police said Routh was driving the truck of victim and ex-Navy SEAL Chris Kyle at the time of his arrest.

Routh is charged with one count of capital murder and two counts of murder in the shooting deaths of Kyle, author of the best-selling book “American Sniper,” and his friend Chad Littlefield at a shooting range Saturday in Glen Rose. He is on suicide watch in the Erath County Jail, where he’s being held on $3 million bail, Sheriff Tommy Bryant said.

Routh, a member of the Individual Ready Reserve, was first taken to a mental hospital Sept. 2 after he threatened to kill his family and himself, according to police records in Lancaster, where Routh lives. Authorities found Routh walking nearby with no shirt and no shoes, and smelling of alcohol. Routh told authorities he was a Marine veteran who was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Routh was a "danger to himself and others" but as we've seen, he did not get the help he needed. Yet none of this has caused mainstream reporters to learn enough to ask how this is still happening. Still? Yes, it has been happening for far too long when they are left off the "to do" list of the military. Congress gets away without asking anyone to be held accountable because the mainstream media is no longer interested in informing the public. Read this from 2009 and know that for all of these years of hearing speech after speech given to reporters, it has all left us with veterans being shafted to the point where almost one every hour takes their own lives. How many times does this have to happen before the media decides it is their job to keep the public informed?

"He went to Fort Lewis to kill himself to prove a point,"
January 12, 2009


" 'Here I am. I was a soldier. You guys didn't help me.' "

Those were the words Josh Barber's widow told a reporter in the article below. That's the real issue here. For all the talk about what's being done, no one is talking about what does not work and may in fact cause more harm than good. What good does it do to tell wounded veterans we're doing this and we're doing that but they still don't get the help they need? As for the "programs" they have in place, some are good but some are bad but they still use them. We don't know why they do and the widows, well they only know they sent their husbands into combat expecting they would be taken care of if they were wounded but they end up with a stranger needing help that never seems to come in time.

If anyone other than the government said they had a program that would cut down the number of PTSD cases, attempted suicide and successful ones, would you really believe them without proof? Wouldn't there have to be years of clinical trails and scrutiny from psychologist and psychiatrists from around the world before they even began to offer the program?

Had they paid attention to all of this all along, when Routh came home, he would have been helped the way he needed to be and two others would probably still be alive.

Spotlight on veteran hunting and shooting clubs

There is no easy answer and it is high time reporters understood this. Hunting, fishing, shooting, Yoga, Martial Arts, you name it, some are helped by each one but no one is helped by all of them. There needs to be real talk on this issue and for a change, reporters asking real questions but that won't happen until they know what they are talking about first. That's the only way they will know what questions to ask.

Murder of former Navy SEAL turns spotlight on veteran hunting and shooting clubs
By Bill Briggs
NBC News contributor

Firing bullets at a gun range — as a Marine reservist was doing Saturday when he allegedly killed ex-Navy SEAL and "American Sniper" author Chris Kyle — can ignite combat flashbacks, a leading expert on post-traumatic stress disorder said Monday, adding, however, that hunting and target practice can be therapeutic for veterans if their shooting buddies intimately know war.

“The question being asked is: Wouldn’t the shooting of a weapon out in the open trigger feelings, nightmares, flashbacks? The answer is, yes, it can,” said Dr. Harry Croft, a San Antonio-based psychiatrist who has talked with more than 7,000 veterans diagnosed with PTSD. “But the hope would be that those would be triggered in a situation that’s safe, where other people are there who understand PTSD and could help the person cope with the thoughts that may come back to them.

“In situations like a shooting range, the sounds may set off a hyper-vigilant response, maybe flashbacks and nightmares at night. But it doesn’t make you violent, like you’re going to kill the person around you. And if the person around you is a Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL who knows and can support you, then that experience can have a more positive effect,” Croft said.
read more here

Fort Carson soldier injured by accidential gunshot

Gun Accidentally Goes Off, Injures Fort Carson Soldier
Feb 04, 2013
Reporter: KKTV

Two Fort Carson soldiers were involved in an accidental shooting over the weekend, according to the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies say that 18-year-old Reid Potwin was shot in the leg when 21-year-old Zachary Clay's gun inadvertently went off. Clay was cleaning his gun at the time of the accident, and manipulated the slide of his .40 caliber pistol, causing it to go off. Clay acknowledged what happened to responding deputies, and witnesses at the scene concurred.
read more here

No record Marine Corps did testing on water at Camp Lejeune

No evidence Marine Corps conducted critical water test at Camp Lejeune
Tampa Bay Times
By William R. Levesque
Times Staff Writer
In Print: Monday, February 4, 2013

The Marine Corps has repeatedly argued federal law didn't regulate the cancer-causing pollutants that fouled the drinking water at Camp Lejeune until long after the contamination was discovered.

But the Corps' own regulations, starting in 1963, required water testing at the North Carolina base and other Marine bases using a method that some say could have provided a warning about tainted water, according to documents and interviews.

The method, called Carbon Chloroform Extract, or CCE, is a "technically practical procedure which will afford a large measure of protection against the presence of undetected toxic materials in finished drinking water," said the 1963 Manual of Naval Preventive Medicine, discussing requirements for all Navy and Marine bases.

The Marine Corps' regulations mandated such testing annually, or every two years if water quality was "stable."

But no record of CCE testing at Camp Lejeune can be found in the thousands of pages of documents detailing what some believe to be the worst drinking-water contamination in U.S. history.
read more here

Ex-Navy SEAL died pursuing his passion

Ex-Navy SEAL died pursuing his passion
By JAMIE STENGLE AND CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
The Associated Press
Published: February 4, 2013

STEPHENVILLE, Texas — The former top Navy SEAL sniper who authorities say was killed at a Texas shooting range was devoted to maintaining camaraderie and helping his fellow veterans find their way after leaving active duty.

Chris Kyle, author of the best-selling book "American Sniper," and his friend Chad Littlefield apparently were doing just that Saturday when, officials say, they were shot and killed by former Marine Eddie Ray Routh.

Kyle, 38, had left the Navy in 2009 after four tours of duty in Iraq, where he earned a reputation as one of the military's most lethal snipers. But he quickly found a way to maintain contact with his fellow veterans and pass on what had helped him work through his own struggles. By late 2011, he filed the paperwork to establish the nonprofit FITCO Cares, which received its nonprofit status the following spring, said FITCO director Travis Cox.

"Chris struggled with some things," Cox said. "He'd been through a lot and he handled it with grace, but yeah he did struggle with some things. And he found a healthy outlet and was proactive in his approach to deal with those issues and wanted to help spread his healing, what worked for him, to others. And that's what he died doing."

For Kyle that healthy outlet was exercise. At the heart of FITCO was giving in-home fitness equipment to physically and emotionally wounded veterans, as well as families who had lost a veteran, Cox said.
read more here