The Wall Street Journal : After the war, 'The Air of Freedom'

WSJ via Al-Medhar (Supplemental infomation from BBC) ^ | 2005 Apr 28

[Wiz]

Recently the BBC decided to conduct an informal survey around Iraq: "Two years after the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad, marking the fall of the city to US-led forces, BBC Arabic.com asked seven Iraqis for their thoughts on how life has changed for them since the conflict."

The results were surprising--at least for the BBC, whose attitude toward the liberation of Iraq has always been lukewarm at best. They were surprising for me too, not so much in what the seven Iraqis had to say, but that the BBC chose to run the story.

Here's Saad, 32, sound engineer from Basra: "Iraqis are feeling better. They are breathing the air of freedom. They read, watch and say what they want. They travel, work and receive a living wage. They use mobile phones, satellite dishes and the internet, which they did not even know before. . . . As for terrorism, we are now beginning to unite against it and to defeat it." Noura, 32, a computer engineer from Baghdad and a Christian: "While we lost security after Saddam's fall, we gained our freedom and a chance to build a new society."

[SMARTY]

It seems like there is always a more positive and candid avowal of improvements when journalists go directly to the citizens of Iraq as opposed to the story we get when journalists quote one another or editorialize on their own. Objectivity and accuracy are things which have not been respected by journalists, so we are forced to read between the lines. This piece attests to the longstanding and regular practice of journalists' personal bias and their lack of professional ethics. For shame!