Posted on 07/13/2005 5:25:33 PM PDT by Pikamax
>>>>Let me set this up, this is the editorial that first started this fight, I will print the rest in order.
Why they hate us
MARK YOST
This is a belated Fourth of July column (superseded by the state shutdown). The headline isn't a prelude to a column justifying why the Islamists hate Westerners so much that they're pouring into Iraq to kill our soldiers (along with innocent fellow Arabs, including Egyptian diplomats). Or defending the sleeper cells planted to blow up Madrid, London and who knows where next. Rather, it's about why most Americans, particularly soldiers, hate the media.
I decided to become a journalist when I was a soldier. I was in the U.S. Navy in the early and mid-1980s — "the glory years," as I like to say, a reference to President Ronald Reagan. As part of my duties, I went to some of the world's hot spots.
While sailing in the South China Sea, my ship picked up some refugee boat people on a rickety raft that I wouldn't take out on Como Lake, much less try to float across the Pacific Ocean. One of the survivors, shortly after coming up the accommodation ladder dripping wet, grabbed me (the nearest sailor), hugged me as tightly as his strength would allow, and could only murmur "thank you" through sobs of joy.
I'd then come back to the U.S. and read accounts of places I'd just been — in papers like the New York Times and Washington Post —that bore no resemblance to what I'd seen. There was one exception: the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I began reading a column called "Thinking Things Over" by Vermont Connecticut Royster, one of the legends of that august page. He would later become a mentor — a God, really — and I eventually worked there.
I'm reminded of why I became a journalist by the horribly slanted reporting coming out of Iraq. Not much has changed since the mid-1980s. Substitute "insurgent" for "Sandinista," "Iraq" for "Soviet Union," "Bush" for "Reagan" and "war on terror" for "Cold War," and the stories need little editing. The U.S. is "bad," our enemies "understandable" if not downright "good."
I know the reporting's bad because I know people in Iraq. A Marine colonel buddy just finished a stint overseeing the power grid. When's the last time you read a story about the progress being made on the power grid? Or the new desalination plant that just came on-line, or the school that just opened, or the Iraqi policeman who died doing something heroic? No, to judge by the dispatches, all the Iraqis do is stand outside markets and government buildings waiting to be blown up.
I also get unfiltered news from Iraq through an e-mail network of military friends who aren't so blinded by their own politics that they can't see the real good we're doing there. More important, they can see beyond their own navel and see the real good we're doing to promote peace and prosperity in the world. What makes this all the more ironic is the fact that the people who are fighting and dying want to stay and the people who are merely observers want to cut and run.
I feel for these soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan because I'm sure they're coming home and noticing the same disconnect that I did when I served. Moreover, stories about their families and others who are here and trying to make a difference largely go unreported.
Ever heard of Soldiers' Angels (http://soldiersangels.homestead.com/index.html) or Operation Minnesota Nice (www.operationminnesotanice.com)?
Probably not.
There have been just two mentions of Operation Minnesota Nice by the Twin Cities metro dailies, one a brief in the Pioneer Press and the other a front-page story in the paper across the river. Operation Minnesota Nice collects care packages — of baby wipes, lip balm, baby powder and other items — for soldiers serving overseas. Soldiers' Angels does the same thing, mating civilians who maybe don't have a loved one overseas with soldiers who don't have loved ones.
Where's the daily coverage of these groups and others like them?
Moreover, where are the stories on nearly every VFW and American Legion hall that's actively supporting the troops? What about their stories?
Instead, we get Monday's front-page story about a "secret" memo about "emerging U.S. plans" to withdraw troops next year. Why isn't the focus of the story the fact that 14 of 18 Iraqi provinces are stable and the four that aren't are primarily home to the genocidal gang of thugs who terrorized that country for 30 years?
And reporters wonder why they're despised.
http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=9875
View Forum Post Topic: Miscellaneous items Date/Time: 7/13/2005 3:14:56 PM Title: From one Pioneer Press staffer to another Posted By: Jim Romenesko
St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter Charles Laszewski's e-mail to Pioneer Press editorial page associate editor Mark Yost
From: Laszewski, Charles Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 10:30 AM To: Yost, Mark Cc: All News Subject: Open letter to Mark Yost
Dear Mark,
When I finished reading your column last night, I could only conclude that you weren’t paying attention when our talented and courageous colleague Hannah Allam spoke here in May.
For if you had, you would have heard Hannah relate how she once ran down a street with bullets pinging off the pavement, how she had to throw away her tennis shoes because they had brain matter on them, how as the daughter of an Egyptian army man, she understands the culture and the language but has been unable to move from her hotel room for weeks at a time because security is so precarious. And, of course, you would have heard how her friend and translator lost her husband, son, and mother-in-law when insurgents shot up the family car because her husband also was working with the news media.
If you had paid attention, you also would have heard her extend an invitation to anyone in the room to come work with her in Baghdad for six weeks. Our own Richard Chin stepped up and will be leaving for Iraq at the end of the month. As far as I know, you did not volunteer for the position. That’s a shame. You are denying our paper, Knight Ridder and the American public your superior reportorial skills.
I was baffled by your statement that stories about the families and others here making a difference go largely unreported. We have written thousands of column inches every time a military unit from here or Wisconsin leaves or returns home and how their families feel. We have covered every death involving our fighting men and women and attended most, if not all, of their funerals. We have written stories about a couple who were married by video conference between Stillwater and Iraq. We have a lovely photo hanging in the sixth floor hallway from the story of the teacher who was surprised by her son returning from the war unexpectedly and walking into her classroom. We have run info boxes on what you can do to help. These are just the ones I recall off the top of my head.
But apparently, if we don’t write about your two favorite organizations, we are derelict and that overwhelms the other thousands of inches. That is unsophisticated, biased reporting that borders on outright falsehood. The fact that you think the activities of every VFW and American Legion hall should trump a front page story on plans to finally withdraw our brave men and women from Iraq shows you don’t even grasp the fundamentals of journalism and putting out a newspaper.
There is much more I could say, but let me end it this way. With your column, you have spat on the copy of the brave men and women who are doing their best in terrible conditions. More than 20 reporters have died in Iraq from around the world. You have insulted them and demeaned them, and to a much lesser degree, demeaned the reporters everywhere who have been threatened with bodily harm, who have been screamed at, or denied public records, just because they wanted to present the closest approximation to the truth they could.
I am embarrassed to call you my colleague.
Sincerely,
Chuck Laszewski
>>Then, KR people put their two cents in.
http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=9881
Topic: Miscellaneous items
Date/Time: 7/13/2005 5:40:28 PM
Title: KR editor, reporter react to Yost's column
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
TO: Knight Ridder Editors
FROM: [KR Washington editor] Clark Hoyt
This is sent in response to a column by St. Paul Pioneer Press associate editorial page editor Mark Yost, posted on Romenesko yesterday:
It's astonishing that Mark Yost, from the distance and safety of St. Paul, Minnesota, presumes to know what's going on in Iraq. He knows the reporting of hundreds of brave journalists, presumably including his own Knight Ridder colleagues Hannah Allam and Tom Lassetter, is bad because his Marine colonel buddy tells him so.
Yost asks why you don't read about progress being made in the power grid, which the colonel oversaw. Maybe it's because there is no progress. Iraqis currently have electricity for an average of nine hours a day. A year ago, they averaged 10 hours of electricity. Iraq's oil production is still below pre-war levels. The unemployment rate is between 30 and 40 percent. New cases of hepatitis have doubled over the rate of 2002, largely because of problems with getting clean drinking water and disposing of sewage.
The "unfiltered news" Yost gets from his military friends is in fact filtered by their isolation in the Green Zone and on American military bases from the Iraqi population, an isolation made necessary by the ferocity of the insurgency. To say that isn't to argue that their perspective is invalid. It's just limited and incomplete.
Knight Ridder's Baghdad bureau chief, Hannah Allam, has read Mark Yost's column. Her response, from the front, says it far better than I could:
It saddens me to read Mark Yost's editorial in the Pioneer Press, the Knight Ridder paper that hired me as a rookie reporter and taught me valuable lessons in life and journalism during the four years I spent there before heading to Iraq.
I invite Mr. Yost to spend a week in our Baghdad bureau, where he can see our Iraqi staff members' toothbrushes lined up in the bathroom because they have no running water at home. I frequently find them camping out in the office overnight because electricity is still only sporadic in their sweltering neighborhoods, despite what I'm sure are the best-intentioned efforts of people like his Marine buddy working on the electrical grid.
Mr. Yost could have come with me today as I visited one of my own military buddies, who like most officers doesn't leave the protected Green Zone compound except by helicopter or massive convoy. The Army official picked me up in his air-conditioned Explorer, took me to Burger King for lunch and showed me photos of the family he misses so terribly. The official is a great guy, and like so many other soldiers, it's not politics that blind him from seeing the real Iraq. The compound's maze of tall blast wall and miles of concertina wire obscure the view, too.
Mr. Yost can listen to our bureau's morning planning meetings, where we orchestrate a trip to buy bottled water (the tap water is contaminated, when it works) as if we're plotting a military operation. I wonder whether he prefers riding in the first car -- the most exposed to shrapnel and bullets -- or the chase car, which is designed to act as a buffer between us and potential kidnappers.
Perhaps Mr. Yost would be moved by our office's tribute wall to Yasser Salihee, our brave and wonderful colleague, who at age 30 joined the ranks of Iraqi civilians shot to death by American soldiers. Mr. Yost would have appreciated one of Yasser's last stories -- a rare good-news piece about humanitarian aid reaching the holy city of Najaf.
Mr. Yost's contention that 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces are stable is pure fantasy. On his visit to Baghdhad, he can check that by chatting with our resident British security consultant, who every day receives a province-by-province breakdown of the roadside bombs, ambushes, assassinations and other violence throughout the country.
If Baghdad is too far for Mr. Yost to travel (and I don't blame him, given the treacherous airport road to reach our fortress-like hotel), why not just head to Oklahoma? There, he can meet my former Iraqi translator, Ban Adil, and her young son. They're rebuilding their lives under political asylum after insurgents in Baghdad followed Ban's family home one night and gunned down her 4-year-old daughter, her husband and her elderly mother in law.
Freshly painted schools and a new desalination plant might add up to "mission accomplished" for some people.
Too bad Ban's daughter never got to enjoy those fruits of her liberation.
I guess to sum it up
Reporter A(Yost) says the reporting from Iraq sucks.
Reporter B(Laszewski) uses reporter deaths to make it out he is on sacred ground, of course not doesn' answer any of the points. Just goes on an emotional tirade that Romenesko gets to post.
Reporter C and D(KR people) whine about their problems and use a guy's dead daughter to score points but still does not answer any of Reporter A's complaints.
and yes the reporting does suck from Iraq and KR does so on purpose.
If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.
Of course, demand has increased exponentially in the intervening time due to unprecedented economic expansion, a little item that somebody seems to be forgetting. I think these two characters proved Yost's point for him.
Yup. . .all those 1,700 warrior deaths are from drowning in the hotel pool inside the Green Zone and NOT out on the streets, fighting a pig scat cowardly enemy. . .yup. . .those guys out on the line don't know what the heck they are talking about.
I'd like to invite Mr. Hoyt and some of his buddies to come chill in Fallujah for a couple days. So Americans are afraid to go outside the "Green Zone," huh?
Sounds like the one who never stuck his nose out of the Green Zone was actually Mr. Hoyt himself.
- ThreeTracks
Oh yeah, and it's not just the people here who object to the poor reporting, it's the Iraqi people who are hopping mad at our media as well.
Gee, I thought liberals said that it was the height of courage and bravery and heroism and patriotism to criticize.
It's astonishing that the NYT editorial board, from the distance and safety of New York, New York, presumes to know what's going on in Iraq.
Too bad they never left the office to find out WHY there was no water. They might have stumbled across a very interesting story. For instance, the people of Baghdad were joyous about the water outage. Want to know why? Because the Iraqi parliment had to shut down because there was no water. For the first time ever, the government was going through what the people were going through and that made for one of the most joyous days since the liberation for the Iraqi people. Perhaps if these "journalists" left their office, they might know the reason why.
Reporter Laszewski and editor Hoyt have their own biases, which should come as a surprise to no one. Liberal bias is legendary. But I don't understand why they have to trash our efforts in Iraq - incessantly. And be anti-military - incessantly. But I will tell you I am sick and tired of arguing with these liberal dopes. And I don't respect their opinions.
"Gee, I thought liberals said that it was the height of courage and bravery and heroism and patriotism to criticize.
"
You are 99% correct, the statement they made 100% correct is: Liberals say that it is the height of courage and bravery and heroism and patriotism to criticize CONSERVATIVES.
My favorite was shortly after we invaded, the liberals in congress were complaining about how terrible WE made it there, saying things like there is only power 10 hours a day and only 25% of the country has water and 80% are living in abject poverty. When the real story is that BEFORE we arrived, there was power only 4 hours a day, only 5% of the population had running water and 98% of the poulation lived in abject poverty. Shows what increddible improvements we made in a couple weeks of occupation that Saddam could easily have made during his rule instead of squandering it on presidential palace after presidential palace...(BTW Statistics are for illustration only as I don't remember what the actual statistics were at that time)
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