Bonus Ep! What Happened to Journalism?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "History As It Happens"

Bonus Ep! What Happened to Journalism?

Host: Martin Di Caro
Guest: Greg Jarrett (retired reporter, Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame, former ABC News war correspondent)
Date: October 19, 2025

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Main Theme

This episode tackles the dramatic decline in public trust in American journalism. Host Martin Di Caro and veteran reporter Greg Jarrett explore how journalistic standards, business models, and newsroom cultures have changed—from the heyday of local radio newsrooms and international reporting to an era dominated by platform-based, often personality-driven journalism. With Jarrett’s five-decade career as backdrop, the conversation touches on the consequences of consolidation, the rise of digital media, and the blurred lines between reporting and opinion.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Decline in Trust and the Changing Definition of "Media"

• Di Caro sets the scene, noting that trust in the news media has “plummeted,” and questions what/who constitutes “the media” today: traditional newsrooms, online publications, independent Substack writers, or influencers and podcasters ([00:00]-[01:34]).
• He singles out the fate of “mainstream” outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and major TV/radio as audience numbers and prestige erode.

2. The Social Media Problem

• Di Caro describes how social media has upended credibility:
  • "Individual journalists damage their credibility or their careers. When trying to burnish their own brands, they post their personal opinions about the subjects they're covering." ([00:55])
• Case study: Former ABC News correspondent Terry Moran’s suspension/firing over opinionated tweets about figures like Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, and his subsequent rebirth as a Substack newsletter author with 115,000+ subscribers ([01:34]-[02:21]).

3. Greg Jarrett’s Early Path in Journalism

• Jarrett shares his childhood fascination with war correspondents, inspired by historic figures and personal family history in Guadalcanal ([03:35]-[05:12]).
  • Quote:

    “How many people do I know who, when they were nine years old, wanted to be something, and when they were...65, 69 years old, realized that I got to be what I wanted to be?” – Greg Jarrett ([05:03])

• He recounts experiences at segregated and newly integrated high schools in Texas and Louisiana, providing firsthand insight into race relations and social change in 1970’s America ([05:14]-[08:03]).

4. Climbing the Radio "Farm System" and International Reporting

• Both Jarrett and Di Caro reflect on starting out in small markets, learning from mistakes, and working up to larger stations ([08:14]-[09:56]).
• Jarrett’s global reporting career at ABC included:
  • Central American civil wars in the 1980s (Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador)
  • The Balkan conflicts and Sarajevo under siege in the ‘90s
  • Gulf War One (1991), Somalia (including Black Hawk Down), and multiple trips back to Iraq ([09:56]-[13:42])
• Vivid description of war reporting conditions, e.g. living in hotels, avoiding snipers, and surviving in failed states:
  • Quote:

    “In Bosnia...I stayed on the ninth floor and newcomers would say, ‘man, why are you on the ninth floor?’ And I’d say, ‘because they can’t get an angle from the hillside into my bed.’” – Greg Jarrett ([10:46])

5. The Business Model Collapse & Media Consolidation

• Jarrett outlines deregulation’s havoc in radio: giant companies “buying multiple [stations]...paying 10 to 20 times cash flow,” then slashing staff and quality to service debt ([15:00]-[17:28]).
• Di Caro shares the realities of modern radio consolidation:
  • Reading generic newscasts for multiple cities from a single studio, replacing local journalism ([17:28]-[18:47]).
  • Quote:

    “I was being sent copy and then I would have to read the copy in two minute chunks and then using digital technology, send these newscasts back to the radio station that didn’t have their own news departments anymore. I was their news department, sitting in a studio in Providence, Rhode Island...It’s ridiculous.” – Martin Di Caro ([18:13])

• Big stations like KGO slashed experienced staff ("overscale performers") in 2009; Jarrett was among nine top reporters let go in a single day ([18:47]-[20:47]).
• International reporting budgets vanished, and remaining correspondents became “parachute journalists,” dropping in briefly versus living in the field.

6. Erosion of Expertise and Journalistic Standards

• The loss of specialist correspondents means reporting errors proliferate; Jarrett laments inaccurate aviation reporting and how niche expertise has evaporated ([20:47])

7. Blurred Lines: Reporters as Commentators

• The conversation returns to today’s erosion of impartiality, particularly online:
  • Newsroom cultures increasingly expect “a take” rather than objective reporting ([21:43]).
  • Example: At Bloomberg News, displaying opinion—on a placard or social media—was grounds for termination, in contrast to much of today’s industry ([21:43]).
• Jarrett recalls being suspended by ABC for inadvertently saying “our troops” on-air:
  • Quote:

    “You said, our troops. We don’t have troops. The US Government has troops. ABC has correspondents.” – Advice given to Greg Jarrett by his news manager ([23:06])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Social Media & Brand-Building:
  "Individual journalists damage their credibility or their careers. When trying to burnish their own brands, they post their personal opinions about the subjects they’re covering." – Martin Di Caro ([00:55])
• On Being a Reporter:
  “How many people do I know who, when they were nine years old, wanted to be something, and when they were...65, 69 years old, realized that I got to be what I wanted to be?” – Greg Jarrett ([05:03])
• On Reporting From Sarajevo:
  “Because they can’t get an angle from the hillside into my bed.” – Greg Jarrett ([10:46]) (explaining his preference for a particular room to avoid snipers)
• On the End of the Old Business Model:
  “They started cutting quality. They started taking their million and a half dollar morning show and saying we don’t have to spend that anymore. We can go out and hire these kids at scale and do it that way.” – Greg Jarrett ([16:53])
• On Genericized Radio Reporting:
  “I was their news department, sitting in a studio in Providence, Rhode Island...It’s ridiculous.” – Martin Di Caro ([18:13])
• On Journalistic Impartiality:
  “You said, our troops. We don’t have troops. The US Government has troops. ABC has correspondents.” – Jarrett’s editor, quoting a lesson in objectivity ([23:06])

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–01:34: Decline of public trust and the changing news media landscape
• 01:34–02:21: Terry Moran’s fate and the rise of personality-driven journalism
• 03:35–08:14: Jarrett’s childhood, early radio career, experiences with segregation and integration
• 08:45–13:42: War correspondence—Central America, Balkans, Gulf, Somalia; vivid anecdotes of reporting dangers
• 15:00–20:47: Media consolidation, deregulation, decline of newsroom budgets and expertise, the “parachute” reporter
• 21:43–23:18: Social media, opinion, and the erosion of objectivity—historical contrasts and modern dilemmas

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Conclusion

Through Jarrett’s stories and Di Caro’s industry perspective, this episode provides a grounded, personal account of the radical transformation of journalism—from robust, locally anchored newsrooms with entrenched standards, to an era of financial insecurity, social media-driven commentary, and the erosion of expertise and trust. Listeners gain both historical context and urgent, firsthand reflections on what’s been lost in American journalism—and what may lie ahead.

Transcript

[A]

This is a bonus episode of history as it happens. It's October 19, 2025. What has happened to journalism? Every major poll shows the American public's trust in the news media has plummeted. But who are the news media? Major newspapers and TV stations? Edgier online publications? What about independent journalists who work without editors on platforms like Substack or podcasters and YouTubers who have huge audiences, sometimes in the millions? Well, it is a good question. What I mean by the mainstream media is newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post and the major TV and radio networks, including npr, the traditional pillars of journalism that are losing audience share. In this episode, we're joined by a distinguished reporter, now retired, who spent more than 50 years covering the news in major American media markets. Greg Jarrett is a member of the Bay Area Radio hall of Fame. He covered wars and natural disasters across the globe for ABC News. So the loss in trust and prestige in our industry, there are many sources. The business model is broken. Hundreds of newspapers have gone out of business. Local radio stations struggle to maintain news departments. I started in local radio many years ago. If I were starting today, I'm not sure I'd find a place to hire me. There is also social media, where individual journalists damage their credibility or their careers. When trying to burnish their own brands, they post their personal opinions about the subjects they're covering.

[B]

ABC News suspended their longtime national correspondent, Terry Moran over his social media posts about President Trump and his administration.

[A]

This comes after Moran, you may remember, earlier this year, ABC News dumped longtime correspondent Terry Moran after he tweeted, stephen Miller is a man who is richly endowed with a capacity for hatred. He, he is a world class hater. You can see this just by looking at him, because you can see his hatreds are a spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate. And about President Donald Trump, Moran added, Trump's hatred is only a means to an end. And that end is his own glorification. That is his spiritual nourishment. Well, Moran is now on Substack, where he has more than 115,000 subscribers. And he can be as opinionated as he'd like.

[B]

Hello, everyone. I'm Terry Moran, and for almost 28.

[A]

Years, I was a reporter and anchor for ABC.

[B]

And as you may have heard, I'm not there anymore. I'm here with you on Substack.

[A]

Of course, for decades, right wing radio hosts, among others, had vilified the news media as a bunch of liberal liars. But the loss of trust now exists across the political spectrum as People of all political persuasions seek out sources that cater to their feelings and prejudices as traditional powerhouses bleed subscribers and cut their staff. As social media algorithms feed our brains, garbage masquerading as information. And as more than a few journalists denigrate standards of fairness and impartiality because they believe the survival of American democracy in the age of Trump depends on it. Greg Jarrett, welcome to the show.

[B]

We worked together for a while, Martin, and those days ended way too soon. But you wound up back in D.C. i wound up back on the West Coast.

[A]

We did work together. I never met you. I only heard you on the radio at Bloomberg. You know, the reason I wanted to have you on the podcast was to talk about what happened to the news media. But first, your career. When did it start and where?

[B]

Well, I was always dabbling in broadcasting. I loved it. But let me start at the very beginning, and I'll make this as quick as possible. My parents traveled all over the United States, Canada and Mexico for jobs. My dad was in the aviation industry. After World War II, during that period of time, I read a lot. And actually, this particular story, we were in Beaumont, California. I would stop at the library on the way home every day and read until it was time to go home. I was what you called a latchkey kid. And one day I overstayed my welcome. The library shut down. My dad and the sheriff showed up. It was like 9 o' clock at night, off in a corner reading. And I was reading Richard Trorgaskis, Ernest Hemingway, Ernie Pyle. And I'd gotten to the point of doing that every day. Famous war correspondence. I just couldn't stop reading this one particular book called Guadalcanal Diaries because my biological father was in the 1st Marine Division and they were the first to land on Guadalcanal. So I got interested in that. And I was berated by the sheriff nicely. Please leave the library when it closes at 6. My dad took me outside and I was kind of expecting, you know, a paddling. But he said, I'm proud of you for reading, but why did you? I said, I got into it and I said, I know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be a war correspondent. In ensuing years, the past several years, I've thought to myself, how many people do I know who, when they were nine years old, wanted to be something, and when they were, you know, 65, 69 years old, realized that I got to be what I wanted to be?

[A]

Now you became a war correspondent. That's right.

[B]

I Started though my main radio career started in a little place called New Iberia, Louisiana. I went to high school for three years in California. Then I won a spot to play football in Odessa, Texas. And my big brother lived there. So it was a no brainer. I'm going to go there because they promised me a football scholarship. So I got there, I realized they were still segregated, but they were a hell of a football team. And I didn't even really know what segregation was except from the news.

[A]

What year was this?

[B]

1970. So it was the last year that they were segregated from what I understand. But I got on the practice field and I asked my coaches, I said, excuse me guys, where are the fast guys? And they said, greg, you ran a 9, 700 yard dash, you're the fast guy. I went, you know what I'm talking about? And they said, well, they're not here yet. We don't, we don't play with them yet. Anyway, I got injured there and we wound up moving to New Iberia, Louisiana to follow my brother. And what do you know, they were in their first year of integration. So I got to see it all. I got to see everybody going to school together and getting along. I got to see basically an all white, 2000 person school in Texas. And then to a place where they had gone from two schools, George Washington High School, the black school, and New Bribe Area Senior High, into one combined school and the tensions that were there. I saw a guy with a shotgun come get his daughter out of class because he found out that the black kids were eating at the same lunch table. She was. So I was just astounded by all that.

[A]

And Again, this is 1970. This is already a generation after Brown versus Board of Ed. But we know that schools resisted that.

[B]

Yeah, the one in Texas, it was a beautiful school. Oil money flowed in there. The, you know, the gym was right out of It's a Wonderful Life with a floor that opened up into a double Olympic size pool, the whole nine yards. They said, when, when I asked, how can you stay segregated? They said, well, we don't need federal money, so the hell with them. We're going to stay segregated. Which it only lasted, as I said, the rest of that year. But my knee was messed up, I couldn't play football anymore. And we were in Louisiana and I was always in speech and debate. My debate partner said, come down to the radio station with me, see what I do on weekends. And he took me and introduced me to the owner, manager Donald Bonin. And they took me in the Production room. And we were messing around and I recorded a newscast just from AP wire. He immediately offered me a job. And he said, you're going to have to get your third class, actually. He said, you're going to have to get your third class license with a broadcast endorsement, and I'll send you down to New New Orleans to do that. And I went, okay, that's going to be interesting. So I hitchhiked to New Orleans. What do you know? I took the test. I passed the test, the FCC test. Next week I was on the radio and it was the holiday season. First song I ever played on the radio was Please Come Home for Christma.

[A]

About 17 years old.

[B]

Seventeen, yeah, I was 17 and I had my own show. It was from about 9 o' clock at night until we went off the air, which usually was at midnight.

[A]

So I started in radio in the late 1990s. That was still the era where you moved around from market to market. You climbed markets, as they said. You got training in the farm system, little radio stations in small markets where you can make a lot of mistakes, until you worked your way up to the big time. And you sent me a short history of the career of Greg Jarrett in an email. And I was able to see all the different cities and radio stations you worked at. You eventually became a correspondent for ABC News Radio, right? And that's where you got your overseas.

[B]

I actually became a correspondent for ABC News. So I worked in television and radio. My third job in broadcasting was at Channel 3 in Lafayette, Louisiana, which was the ABC affiliate there. I was a sophomore in college, became acquainted with a lot of people there. But yeah, I went to work. As you say, there's a farm system in local radio, and there certainly is. There's also a farm system for the networks. Back then they were called O&OS. So WBBM in Chicago was a CBS O and O. WABC in New York was an ABC O and O, KGO in San Francisco and ABC O and O and so on and so on. And what they would do is they would take people that they hired for ABC and put them in one of those newsrooms and they would work as a national correspondent and sometimes an international correspondent if they were deemed capable. So they had all the guys at the bureaus in Washington, D.C. new York and Los Angeles. So I got to work at KGO Radio, KGO tv and the ABC network would call my boss and say, we'll pay to send Greg to Saudi Arabia for Gulf War One and you can have his reports and he'll Also do television. I did News one from Somalia, from Bosnia.

[A]

Yeah. I was going to ask you, which wars did you cover?

[B]

Where were you for the network? I covered Central America. I am a Spanish speaker, so that was very fortuitous for them and for me because I covered the civil wars in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador and lived there. I mean, those were times when you sent somebody somewhere and they lived there. So I would start at a hotel and media hotel in Managua, Nicaragua, for example, was the Intercontinental. Within a week I moved out of there into a small pension in the middle of Managua. Because you're more in touch with what's going on. So Central America was 1980s. Yeah, that was the mid-80s. Bosnia. I went back there about three times and I would stay for a month or so, traveling all over. I mean, the way they did it then was just extraordinary because in Bosnia, for example, ABC would hire personal guards. Everybody traveled in armored vehicles. There was sniper alley there. They would shoot at you. We stayed at the Holiday Inn, which was a multi story place and you probably, if you look, you can see pictures of it and there's scorch marks on the walls and the windows are missing because snipers from the surrounding hills would shoot into the rooms. I stayed on the ninth floor and newcomers would say, man, why are you on the ninth floor? And I'd say, because they can't get an angle from the hillside into my bed. There are bullet holes in the wall, but I can crawl around at night and they miss me if they start shooting in the window. The downside of that is there's no running water, no electricity, and I had to carry buckets of water up and fill the tub so I would be able to flush the toilet.

[A]

So it's early 1990s, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, right under Tito.

[B]

Tito's gone. All of a sudden it was Serbia against Bosnia. The Croatians were involved. I was in all of the various places of that region.

[A]

Gulf War One, you mentioned.

[B]

Oh, yeah, Gulf War One, 1991. I flew into Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, traveled as a member of the very controversial Pentagon pool. Breaking off from the pool several times and getting in quite a bit of trouble to travel on my own across the sand dunes, which may have not been smart, but it got me a lot more coverage. Somalia. I covered the original invasion of Somalia and also Black Hawk Down. In fact, I was in Bosnia when I got the call on a satellite phone saying, we need you to get down to the airport there in Sarajevo. We're going to fly you To Flughaven Frankfurt. And from there, we're going to send you back to Somalia.

[A]

When you got to Mogadishu, what was that like?

[B]

Mogadishu has to be one of the most impressive stories of my life. Impressive because it allowed me to see what happens when colonialism is reversed and Western powers come in and take over. So you nomads and turned them into bellboys with white gloves and pith hats and delivery boys on bicycles dressed all in white with gloves. And as humans will do, they forgot how to be nomads. They forgot how to fend for themselves and started relying on what they thought was a stable government. You know, from the Italians to the English to the Russians, everybody coming in there and turning them into servants. They forgot how to feed themselves. Warlords came in and took over. I got to see how the UN operated, which, quite frankly, and I've said this before, in every environment that I've worked in, where the UN comes in, there are several of the UN members who take advantage of the situation. In the case of Somalia, they were taking supplies that were offloaded in Mogadishu and funneling them to various warlords for extraordinary amounts of money. It turned into a place where there wasn't a scrap of copper or metal left because they were ripping it out and using it for stoves. They were chewing Kot like crazy and carrying AK47s and shooting each other. Handed out state.

[A]

Yeah, it was a failed state. You know, I was only 17 in 1992 when George H.W. bush sent the US military into Somalia for that humanitarian mission.

[B]

I want to talk to you today about the tragedy in Somalia and about a mission that can ease suffering and save lives. Every American has seen the shocking impact images from Somalia. The scope of suffering there is hard to imagine. Already over a quarter million people, as many as people as live in Buffalo, New York, have died in the Somali famine.

[A]

So you were already a professional international correspondent. I was just getting out of high school, but I had already decided I wanted to get into broadcasting, but I wanted to be a sports broadcaster. That's another story.

[B]

Of course you did.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You wanted to cover those fantastic jets.

[A]

That's right. You know, I recently watched Black Hawk down, that movie, and that was some movie. You really get a sense, at least of the fighting in an urban environment. But you were experiencing this firsthand. As a journalist, you have so much experience, so much knowledge. You are witnessing history. So that is why I thought it would be good to have you on to discuss what is wrong with journalism right now. But before we get to that, we'll just tie up your career. You recently retired, but all in all, what you have about five decades of experience, right?

[B]

53 years, yes. And the last several years, with the exception of Bloomberg, were in involved in the devolvement of the industry. So let's go to kgo, the number one rated radio station in the United States of America, billing between 40 and $50 million a year, paying their morning team, the news duo who did the mornings were averaging $2.5 million a year between the two of them at KGO, which is just a fantastically number one rated radio station with all these high ratings and everything. And then all of a sudden deregulation came in. With deregulation came people deciding that they're going to buy multiple radio stations.

[A]

So mid-1990s, right?

[B]

WTOP in D.C. is a good example of this. They were huge billing radio station and the financiers decided to get involved in this because they found out they could buy multiple properties and they're going $40 million a year. That's great. But oh my God, they're spending this much money on their staff, they're spending much money on their product. We don't have to do that anymore because the regulations aren't there that we have to follow. So they started paying 10 times or more, 10 to 20 times cash flow. So let's just take the lower number. 10 times $40 million billion a year. That's $400 million for a single radio station. And you work out the interest rates at that point in time and you're talking between 10 and 15% interest rates on that money, including now you're looking at your nuts. So $40 million a year is what the station is bringing in. Back under ABC when ABC owned the property and was paying the bills. You've got electricity, you own the property. So you're not having to pay for that. You've had it for decades since radio began. The staff is probably costing you between five and seven million dollars a year. So let's just say your output, your nut is $10 million a year. You're sending $30 million a year back to the company in New York City. ABC is making $30 million a year. But if you've paid 400 million DOL property, you not only have the electricity, the water, the bathroom, the staff, but you've got to service that debt. So what did they start doing, Martin? They started cutting quality. They started taking their million and a half dollar morning show and saying we don't have to spend that anymore. We can go out and hire these kids at scale and do it that way.

[A]

There's also syndication as well. Sorry to interrupt, Greg, but I'll just add, you know, I got into radio and this was really starting to pick up and I didn't know anything, anything about the business. I got into it. So naive. I'm going to become a professional radio broadcaster and reporter and everywhere I go is going to be so professional. And why wouldn't they want to spend money on us? Because we're the talented people doing these jobs. And my first salary, wow, $19,000 a year in a tiny little market. But as I started to climb the ladder and work in larger places, I started to be exposed to this consolidation. I started to learn about companies called Clear Channel and Cumulus and all these others that were buying up as you radio stations for a lot, a lot, a lot of money. I worked for a radio station group in Providence, Rhode island, where I was doing newscasts for cities all over New England that were owned by Clear Channel. At the time, I didn't know anything about New Haven, Connecticut or Worcester, Massachusetts. I was being sent copy and then I would have to read the copy in two minute chunks and then using digital technology, send these newscasts back to the radio station that didn't have their own news departments anymore. I was their news department, sitting in a studio in Providence, Rhode island, doing the news for Worcester, Massachusetts. It's ridiculous. So go ahead. I mean, that's what was happening that.

[B]

Was driving the wages down for people like me who were experienced. Luckily, I didn't get involved in that kind of pressure because it sounds egotistical, because of my reputation and so on. But 2009 was a watershed year for the industry because, for example, KGO, number one for over 30 years, they started letting what they called their overscale performers go, giving us buyouts. I was one of the first wave of nine to be let go in one day at kgo. Luckily, I got picked up immediately by both WGN in Chicago and WBBM in Chicago. Both offered me a job within three hours of me being let go in San Francisco. But nine of us at one time of the huge news department of one of the top news departments in the world, suddenly gone. The practice of sending somebo to Saudi Arabia, to Iraq. I went to Iraq three times is over because they don't pay Lloyds of London anymore price for the premiums for life insurance for people like me who would go over there for two and a half, three months at A time. You watch an international war correspondent now and BBC has some good ones, but the ones that are on our air have, you know, strange accents. Americans don't go over there except for maybe a three day weekend staying in a nearby hotel and being, you know, shuttled in to cover the story. That's one part of the quality that's going down is the fact that you don't have people who are dedicated to a particular job anymore. I was also an aviation and space correspondent. I'm a multi engine rated land and seaplane pilot. I covered the space shuttles, I covered wars. That was because I had an expertise in those areas and a heavy interest in those areas. That doesn't happen anymore. You hear the weirdest stuff covering aviation. For example, I heard a guy the other day say, yeah, the airplane stalled before it crashed. That means the engine went out. And I'm screaming, no, that doesn't mean the engine died in the airplane. Stalling does not mean the engine died. It means the wing quit flying, for God's sakes.

[A]

You witnessed, you were part of, I'll call it the heyday of broadcast TV and radio. You know, there's so many ways to approach this subject. What happened to journalism? I'm going to try, try to focus our conversation here on one or two aspects of it because it is a sprawling subject. We'll be talking about it all day long. But one aspect of this is the business model and this of course affects newspapers as well. Another thing is the proliferation of the Internet, the democratization of news and information, social media. There's so much to this as to why the media that you came of age in and that you excel in doesn't exist anymore. Right. The reason I wanted to have you on here, as I mentioned at the top, Terry Moran at abc. So why don't we just start there? Reporters today who are too opinionated online, why don't you pick it up from there? What's wrong with what's happening today with journalists eroding their own credibility?

[B]

In many cases it's not their fault because they're expected at many outlets to have a take, as it's called, on a particular issue. You and I worked for Bloomberg and if you remember, the onboarding process involved several days, if not weeks of education called Bloomberg University. One of the things that they told us is we could not go out and march and hold up a placard. And then they told us holding a placard in a march is the same thing as posting an opinion on Facebook. You can't do that or we will terminate you. And I went, wow, you know, I haven't heard this from a broadcast outlet in so long. But they were doing it in, you know, 2000, 2013. I'll give you an example. The Gulf War one, 1991. ABC had a studio at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dahran. I would go out to the front and report for two, three weeks, and then I would come back and I would do live reports, my R and R from our hotel studio for three or four days before I was shipped back to the front. One of those live reports, I'm sitting there, it's all extemporaneous. I had a couple of key bullet points written down. People would ask me a question and I would riff with a report. And in one case I said, our troops were moving forward. Forward. And as soon as I finished the report, the lead correspondent, the managing correspondent there came over and took me by the shoulder very gently and said, greg, come with me. I said, what? And he says, you've been suspended for a day of air. Go back to your room. Think about what you did. And I said, what did I do? You said, our troops. We don't have troops. The US Government has troops.

[A]

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