Reporters See Disconnect in Iraq Coverage
A week after the New York Times' John Burns took the American media to task for not reporting the truth about pre-war Iraq, other correspondents are asking if the current media portrayal of the country is accurate. Time's Brian Bennett says Iraq is not perfect but that Americans "have misperception of what's going on" and MSNBC's Bob Arnot (pictured) wonders "am I in the same country?"...
mediaresearch.org
Three reporters in Iraq see a disconnect between the
bleak media portrayals of Iraq and the better reality. A day after
Democratic Congressman Jim Marshall condemned the media's
excessive negativism in covering Iraq, Time magazine's Brian
Bennett, MSNBC's Bob Arnot and FNC's Molly Henneberg backed him up
on how media reports don't match the improving reality of the
situation, but CNN's Nic Robertson and CBS's Kimberly Dozier
contended it's just as bad as they portray it.
Plus, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann agreed there's a "lack of media
attention about the success stories about what those Americans in
harm's way are accomplishing."
As recounted in the September 23 CyberAlert, in a September 22
op-ed for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, U.S. Representative
Jim Marshall of Georgia, who just returned from a trip to Iraq,
asserted: "I'm afraid the news media are hurting our chances. They
are dwelling upon the mistakes, the ambushes, the soldiers killed,
the wounded....Fair enough. But it is not balancing this bad news
with 'the rest of the story,' the progress made daily, the good
news. The falsely bleak picture weakens our national resolve,
discourages Iraqi cooperation and emboldens our enemy."
For an excerpt of Marshall's piece and link to the full op-ed:
mediaresearch.org
Introducing an interview with Marshall, Tuesday night on his
FNC show Brit Hume recited an e-mail FNC's Molly Henneberg, who
recently returned to Baghdad after a few months, sent to friends
and colleagues earlier in the day (ellipses as in text on screen):
"What a difference three months makes. Yes, there is still
violence here...but oh my goodness...this place feels like a city
again...the city looks/seems so much more alive -- more traffic,
more stores open, more people coming and going, more parties.
Don't get me wrong...there are still a LOT of problems here with
the infrastructure, but this country appears to be getting its act
together."
For a picture and bio of Henneberg:
foxnews.com
Tuesday's USA Today featured a "Media Mix" story by Peter
Johnson about how reporters in Iraq assess coverage. Johnson
relayed how Time magazine's Brian Bennett found that when he
"visited the USA a few weeks ago he realized that, five months
after the U.S. invasion, the Iraq he lives in doesn't mesh with
the bleak picture that friends here are getting from the media."
MSNBC's Bob Arnot told Johnson: "I contrast some of the infectious
enthusiasm I see here with what I see on TV, and I say, 'Oh, my
God, am I in the same country?'"
But, "CNN correspondent Nic Robertson has a much different
take and describes the U.S.-led coalition as tight-lipped. If
anything, he says, the picture is bleaker than reported by the
coalition, and there is widespread resistance to the United States
and its allies." And, "CBS' Kimberly Dozier is increasingly
pessimistic. She has made an effort to find some 'good news'
stories, sensing that her supervisors and viewers are tiring of
'bash the Americans' reports. That said, 'each time you come back
here, it feels more dangerous,' she says."
Maybe one of those distraught supervisors is Dan Rather
himself. Last Friday night, Rather set up a Dozier story on how,
as Rather put it, "ordinary Iraqis are faced with an extraordinary
surge of crime, banditry and thuggery from carjacking and robbery
to kidnaping and murder" resulting "in a population fearful,
frustrated, angry and heavily armed." But after Dozier's dire
piece, Rather conceded that the report he just aired had distorted
the situation: "A reminder that television sometimes has trouble
with perspective, so you may want to note that in some areas of
Iraq, things are peaceful." For details:
mediaresearch.org
For a picture and bio of BBC-veteran Dozier:
cbsnews.com
For a picture and bio of Robertson:
cnn.com
An excerpt from Johnson's September 23 USA Today "Life"
section story:
Is the cup half full or half empty in Iraq?
Just as opinions about the war and its aftermath vary widely,
reporters in Baghdad disagree about what it's like in Iraq these
days.
Although some paint a picture of recovery, with U.S. armed forces
making progress in getting the country going again, others sketch
a bleaker scene, in which bombings, ambushes and looting are the
rule, not the exception.
Reporters agree on this much: Bad news -- not good -- sells.
"It's the nature of the business," Time's Brian Bennett says.
"What gets in the headlines is the American soldier getting shot,
not the American soldiers rebuilding a school or digging a well."
The Baghdad that Bennett sees is a city where gunfire erupts every
night and dozens of Iraqis are reported dead in the morning.
Looting and robberies are common. "There is a mounting terrorist
threat, and the people who want to kill American soldiers are
getting more organized," he says.
But he also sees a city where restaurants are reopening daily,
where women feel increasingly safe going out to shop, where more
police means intersections aren't as clogged as they were this
summer. "My neighbors are nice," he says. "My street is a pretty
quiet place."
When Bennett visited the USA a few weeks ago, he realized that,
five months after the U.S. invasion, the Iraq he lives in doesn't
mesh with the bleak picture that friends here are getting from the
media.
"I'm not saying all is hunky-dory," Bennett says. "But in the
States, people have a misperception of what's going on."
Which is why Bennett plans to pitch a story about the improving
scene in Iraq, where electricity is being restored daily and
people are getting back to work. "There's been a lot of
improvement that I and my colleagues noticed when we came back
here. People in the States just don't see it."
CNN correspondent Nic Robertson has a much different take and
describes the U.S.-led coalition as tight-lipped. If anything, he
says, the picture is bleaker than reported by the coalition, and
there is widespread resistance to the United States and its
allies.
"The coalition tends to brief us only on incidents where soldiers
are wounded," Robertson says. "Many, many incidents (against
coalition forces) go unreported."...
CBS' Kimberly Dozier is increasingly pessimistic. She has made an
effort to find some "good news" stories, sensing that her
supervisors and viewers are tiring of "bash the Americans"
reports.
That said, "each time you come back here, it feels more
dangerous," she says. "We travel everywhere with security. We
refer to our hotel as the 'bat cave' because basically you do not
go outside without a security guy, a four-wheel-drive vehicle and
a planned escape route."...
Though some areas in Iraq are peaceful, others are not. And
because most news organizations have significantly cut back on
staffing in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, they can't be
everywhere at once.
So if a news organization has reporters traveling with troops that
are attacked, that's the image that is sent back home.
And after any war, "it's usually chaotic for a year or two,"
MSNBC's Bob Arnot says. "I contrast some of the infectious
enthusiasm I see here with what I see on TV, and I say, 'Oh, my
God, am I in the same country?'"...
END of Excerpt
For the USA Today story in full:
usatoday.com
Johnson reported that "Bennett plans to pitch a story about
the improving scene in Iraq." We'll be waiting to see if any such
story ever appears, but it would be a change of pace for Bennett.
His recent stories have been about the hunt for Saddam and the
killing of his two sons, but back in the May 26 issue he was co-
author of a piece titled, "A Journey to the Dark Side of Baghdad:
Two TIME reporters witness victims of the city's chaos firsthand."
It began:
"Baghdad nights are full of menace. The smoke of looted,
burning buildings turns the sunset blood orange. Once darkness
falls, tracer fire arcs across the sky like red fireworks. It's
dazzling but dangerous. One recent salvo came down on a gasoline
tanker, setting off an explosion that killed a man and injured
several others. When the sun goes down, the streets empty quickly.
Curfew unofficially begins at 11 p.m., but few drivers, even those
earning dollars from foreigners, stay out that late. One learns to
fear the shadows that move. Gunfire punches holes in the city's
eerie quiet..."
That's all you get for free on the Time Web site. To pay to
read the whole article:
time.com.
On Tuesday night, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann picked up on
Congressman Marshall's op-ed, MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth noticed,
and after disagreeing with Marshall on the derisive impact on the
war effort of negative coverage, Olbermann conceded that he was
"right on the money about the lack of media attention about the
success stories about what those Americans in harm's way are
accomplishing."
On the September 23 Countdown, Olbermann opined:
"A bipartisan group of seven Congressmen, just back from Iraq,
says the U.S. media is guilty of something, if not as
inflammatory, then perhaps as unfair. Democrat Ike Skelton of
Missouri says that in Iraq, the media has adopted a quote, 'crime-
blotter mentality, reporting only the wounds, the injuries, the
deaths and ignoring good stuff that isn't being reported.'
"And in an opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution,
Georgia Democratic Congressman Jim Marshall writes of escorting
the body of a dead U.S. serviceman home from Iraq and wondering,
quote, 'whether the news media were somehow complicit in his
death. They are dwelling upon the mistakes, the ambushes, the
soldiers killed, the wounded. The falsely bleak picture weakens
our national resolve, discourages Iraqi cooperation, and emboldens
our enemy.' Congressman Marshall does not explain how exactly that
happens. It does not seem to logically hold that the television
you watch here can lead to American deaths there. There's also the
fact that when the President announced the end of major combat
operations, he did not prepare any of us for the awful down sides
of what followed in Iraq.
"Frankly, while what kind of world is created for the Iraqis
is important to most Americans, it cannot possibly rank with
something that is naturally more important still -- the safety of
and the risks facing Americans in Iraq. That's why you're hearing
about those risks rather than the things that are going right.
However, Congressmen Skelton and Marshall are right on the money
about the lack of media attention about the success stories about
what those Americans in harm's way are accomplishing. So here it
is tonight -- not casualty figures, not reporters being defensive,
but good news. Jim Avila is our correspondent in what was once a
part of Baghdad called 'Saddam City.'"
Viewers then saw a look at how things are quiet and peaceful
in the Sadr City area of Baghdad, formerly known as Saddam City --
a story which also aired on the NBC Nightly News.
The Hill newspaper, which covers Congress, on Tuesday ran a
story about the assessment of the situation in Iraq as conveyed by
members of the congressional delegation trip to Iraq which
included Marshall
thehill.com |
