As we prepare for Memorial Day, please remember not to expect any favorable coverage of the military, our servicemen, or veterans on TV or in our newspapers and magazines. If there is any that will be great, but such stories will be the exceptions against the background of anti-military slander that is the assumed truth by the vast majority of those working in the media today.

In a remarkable live interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, ABC's White House reporter Terry Moran said "There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous."

John Leo expands on this theme "In all my years in journalism, I don't think I have met more than one or two reporters who have ever served in the military or who even had a friend in the armed forces. Most media hiring today is from universities where a military career is regarded as bizarre and almost any exercise of American power is considered wrongheaded or evil."

Why do Servicemen and Veterans get so little respect in our society? It just may be due to the average citizen being fed a continuous diet of stories in the news based on "the premise that the military must be lying". How can we expect people to respect members of an organization that is presented as always lying?

My church is helping to honor our Servicemen and Veterans next Sunday and is taking pains to say "This event is not intended to be political in nature or an endorsement of war." This is true, but if you start from the assumption that "American projection of power around the world must be wrong" it is impossible to honor those who wield that power in the military.

Of course this is merely a manifestation of the thinking of those in the "Peace Movement" who regard any American use of force as evil. This explains why their enemies are the US military, American law enforcement, private firearms owners, and conservative Christians who support any of the above. Note that their outrage is selective, and directed at American use of force, as opposed to the use of force by dictators around the world.

John Leo also commented "The disdain that so many reporters have for the military (or for police, the FBI, conservative Christians, or right-to-lifers) frames the way that errors and bogus stories tend to occur. The antimilitary mentality makes atrocity stories easier to publish, even when they are untrue. The classic example is CNN's false 1998 story that the U.S. military knowingly dropped nerve gas on Americans during the Vietnam War. On the other hand, brutal treatment of dissenters by Fidel Castro tends to be softened or omitted in the American press because so many journalists still see him as the romanticized figure from their youth in the 1960s. Another example: It's possible to read newspapers and newsmagazines carefully and never see anything about the liberal indoctrination now taking place at major universities. This has something to do with the fact that the universities are mostly institutions of the left and that newsrooms tend to hire from the left and from the universities in question."

This cultural background makes honoring our veterans next weekend even more important. It also underscores the importance of reforming our culture starting with the moral sickness in our universities today.