Iraq Reporters Hit Back at Claims
They Are Biased on War
The media helped Bush gets this far in his little adventure by failing to report all sorts wonderfull things about him. I find that very few people realized in 2000 just what weasels Bush and Cheney were and are. So I guess it IS the media's fault! :)
After the latest round of blaming the media for distorted coverage in Iraq, which emerged this week from top Bush administraton officials, war reporters and editors strongly defended their coverage this weekend in a variety of venues, as violence in the country reached new levels.
Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru, who recently completed a 14-month stint in Iraq, commented: "Everyone wants to read their view of the war in your story. To me the only issue is whether our stories are real or not. I never got complaints from the people who were involved in the subject matter of the stories.
"The job of soldiering over there is incredibly difficult. I have tremendous respect for those guys. The criticism completely misses the point. Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Where's the good news?"
Writing in The New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman traced the recent upsurge in sadistic killings, then commented: "If this all sounds depressing, it is. That's how people here feel. I've been looking hard, but in two weeks I haven't found an Iraqi optimist.
"In the summer of 2004, I profiled a band of young artists who braved dangerous roads to get away from Baghdad and paint pretty pictures of the Tigris River. Now, they're homebound. There is a similar sense of newfound hopelessness in the faces of the Iraqis I work with....It is difficult to communicate just how violent Baghdad has become."
Clark Hoyt, Washington editor for Knight Ridder, in a commentary piece, wrote, “Our reporting tells us that it's true that there are areas of Iraq -- in the Shiite south and the Kurdish north -- where people walk the streets in relative peace. But Baghdad, Iraq's capital and most populous city, and the Sunni Triangle to its northwest are hellishly dangerous. And that lack of security has overshadowed everything else as Iraqis struggle to build a democratic future.”
Appearing on NBC, its Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel said, “Most Iraqis I speak to say, ‘Actually most reporters get it wrong--it’s the situation on the ground is actually worse than the images we project on television.’"
He added: “We’ll see more and more reports coming out by the media explaining how they are covering the war and I think the Bush administration overplayed their hand in trying to blame their problems on the media.”
Numerous other stories or opinion pieces appeared tackling the question: Is the media missing the “good news” from Iraq?
A lengthy column on the subject today by Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell (where the Fainaru quote appeared) closes with a quote from the paper's military correspondent Thomas Ricks: "Blaming the media is like blaming the rain."
Actually, horrific events in Iraq pretty much provided all the defense the journalists needed. Dozens of Iraqs were killed in violence on Sunday, including a 13-year-old boy killed by a bomb as he walked to school in the southern city of Basra. Police also found 11 handcuffed and bullet-riddled bodies dumped in Baghdad and two in the city of Baqouba. The Iraqi army said it also had dispatched troops to investigate a report of 30 beheaded corpses in a village north of Baghdad.
This and more led Gettleman in The New York Times late Sunday to make this startling observation: "American officials are now saying that Shiite militias are the No. 1 security problem in Iraq, more dangerous than the Sunni-led insurgents." And he added: "Security in Baghdad seems to be deteriorating by the hour, and it is increasingly unclear who is in control."
The most detailed exchange on the good news/bad news debate took place on Howard Kurtz’s “Reliable Sources” on CNN Sunday morning. Here is a lengthy quote from the transcript, featuring CBS correspondent Lara Logan and Pamela Hess of UPI.
The media helped Bush gets this far in his little adventure by failing to report all sorts wonderfull things about him. I find that very few people realized in 2000 just what weasels Bush and Cheney were and are. So I guess it IS the media's fault! :)
After the latest round of blaming the media for distorted coverage in Iraq, which emerged this week from top Bush administraton officials, war reporters and editors strongly defended their coverage this weekend in a variety of venues, as violence in the country reached new levels.
Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru, who recently completed a 14-month stint in Iraq, commented: "Everyone wants to read their view of the war in your story. To me the only issue is whether our stories are real or not. I never got complaints from the people who were involved in the subject matter of the stories.
"The job of soldiering over there is incredibly difficult. I have tremendous respect for those guys. The criticism completely misses the point. Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Where's the good news?"
Writing in The New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman traced the recent upsurge in sadistic killings, then commented: "If this all sounds depressing, it is. That's how people here feel. I've been looking hard, but in two weeks I haven't found an Iraqi optimist.
"In the summer of 2004, I profiled a band of young artists who braved dangerous roads to get away from Baghdad and paint pretty pictures of the Tigris River. Now, they're homebound. There is a similar sense of newfound hopelessness in the faces of the Iraqis I work with....It is difficult to communicate just how violent Baghdad has become."
Clark Hoyt, Washington editor for Knight Ridder, in a commentary piece, wrote, “Our reporting tells us that it's true that there are areas of Iraq -- in the Shiite south and the Kurdish north -- where people walk the streets in relative peace. But Baghdad, Iraq's capital and most populous city, and the Sunni Triangle to its northwest are hellishly dangerous. And that lack of security has overshadowed everything else as Iraqis struggle to build a democratic future.”
Appearing on NBC, its Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel said, “Most Iraqis I speak to say, ‘Actually most reporters get it wrong--it’s the situation on the ground is actually worse than the images we project on television.’"
He added: “We’ll see more and more reports coming out by the media explaining how they are covering the war and I think the Bush administration overplayed their hand in trying to blame their problems on the media.”
Numerous other stories or opinion pieces appeared tackling the question: Is the media missing the “good news” from Iraq?
A lengthy column on the subject today by Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell (where the Fainaru quote appeared) closes with a quote from the paper's military correspondent Thomas Ricks: "Blaming the media is like blaming the rain."
Actually, horrific events in Iraq pretty much provided all the defense the journalists needed. Dozens of Iraqs were killed in violence on Sunday, including a 13-year-old boy killed by a bomb as he walked to school in the southern city of Basra. Police also found 11 handcuffed and bullet-riddled bodies dumped in Baghdad and two in the city of Baqouba. The Iraqi army said it also had dispatched troops to investigate a report of 30 beheaded corpses in a village north of Baghdad.
This and more led Gettleman in The New York Times late Sunday to make this startling observation: "American officials are now saying that Shiite militias are the No. 1 security problem in Iraq, more dangerous than the Sunni-led insurgents." And he added: "Security in Baghdad seems to be deteriorating by the hour, and it is increasingly unclear who is in control."
The most detailed exchange on the good news/bad news debate took place on Howard Kurtz’s “Reliable Sources” on CNN Sunday morning. Here is a lengthy quote from the transcript, featuring CBS correspondent Lara Logan and Pamela Hess of UPI.
posted by Lisa at 11:34 AM
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