http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00199Sig Christenson of the San Antonio Express-News ridicules comments by politicians, laments the lack of reporters covering the war, and cites ground rules that are crippling for photojournalists. He says the media aren’t pressing for answers to vital and obvious questions, such as what plans the Pentagon has for an exit strategy.
-----
No Iraqi could be any further from Indiana. And nothing in Iraq is normal, except death. I blew a gasket in my Green Zone compound. It wasn’t just that these politicians were trying to turn the media into Swiss cheese again. It wasn’t that they were shamelessly trying to score points with their base. Nope, it was their galling dishonesty.
Everybody knows there’s a war on in Iraq. What they don’t realize is there are actually four wars – the one to defeat insurgents and terrorists, another to win support for America’s occupation among a majority of Iraqis and yet a third for hearts and minds among the president’s supporters in the United States.
The fourth is a war for reporters and editors: It is to find and report the truth while staying alive to file another day in Iraq. If we lose this war, you lose, too. Instead of seeing Iraq as it is, you’ll see it the way someone with an agenda wants.
This is an old battle, hardly a Democratic or Republican one, by the way. It is recounted neatly in Phillip Knightley’s book, “The First Casualty.” An aborted Katrina Moment in that history of war correspondents comes in World War I. British Prime Minister Lloyd George tells Manchester Guardian editor C.P. Scott of a dinner he had with reporter Peter Gibbs, who had just returned from the front.
“If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t know and can’t know. The correspondents don’t write and the censorship wouldn’t pass the truth.”