Frank Rich: The Nascar Nightly News: Anchorman Get Your Gun

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: The Nascar Nightly News: Anchorman Get Your Gun: "Kevin Sites, the freelance TV cameraman who caught a marine shooting an apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque, is one such blogger. Mr. Sites is an embedded journalist currently in the employ of NBC News. To NBC's credit, it ran Mr. Sites's mid-November report, on a newscast in which Mr. Williams was then subbing for Mr. Brokaw, and handled it in exemplary fashion. Mr. Sites avoided any snap judgment pending the Marines' own investigation of the shooting, cautioning that a war zone is 'rife with uncertainty and confusion.' But loud voices in red America, especially on blogs, wanted him silenced anyway. On right-wing sites like freerepublic.com Mr. Sites was branded an 'anti-war activist' (which he is not), a traitor and an 'enemy combatant.' Mr. Sites's own blog, touted by Mr. Williams on the air, was full of messages from the relatives of marines profusely thanking the cameraman for bringing them news of their sons in Iraq. That communal message board has since been shut down because of the death threats by other Americans against Mr. Sites."