Posted on 12/03/2006 10:22:15 AM PST by Starman417
One group of Americans who can be proud of their work in Iraq are the print media correspondents based in Baghdad.
They were maligned by the White House and Pentagon as lazy, biased or worse, but their gutsy reporting turned out to be on the mark. Unlike U.S. officials, these journalists lived outside the protected Green Zone and risked their lives daily. Even as the media were being browbeaten by Donald Rumsfeld, print reporters got the trends right.
In a sign of the times (perhaps the gullible have finally realized Fox News is Fox Spin?), I'm no longer getting reader e-mail asking me to write the "good news" about Iraq.
This gives me no cheer. It just makes me wish President Bush read newspapers (he famously told Fox News he doesn't). The president might have learned years ago that we had too few troops, no counterinsurgency strategy, and no grasp of Iraqi social dynamics. (He would have learned little of this from TV networks, which have closed most of their foreign bureaus, or even from CNN, which focuses on breaking news.)
This vindication of print media underscores an incredible irony. At a time when the country is obsessed with the Iraq story, an obsession that drove the recent elections, foreign correspondents are an endangered species. There may soon be few left to sound the alarm if future U.S. foreign ventures turn sour.
It's expensive to maintain foreign bureaus that produce serious coverage, especially in a war zone. As newspapers suffer declines in circulation and advertising, and search for synergy with the Web, foreign coverage is the first casualty.
Mid-size papers such as the Baltimore Sun, Newsday, and Boston Globe are shutting down foreign bureaus. At the moment, The Inquirer has one bureau left, in Jerusalem. More and more papers now take their foreign news from wire services.
Some papers may send reporters on occasional foreign trips, especially to pursue local angles. But parachutists who drop briefly into a big overseas story lack foreign experience and often get the story wrong. You could see the impact of inexperience when a horde of reporters rushed to cover Israel's recent mini-war with Lebanon's Hezbollah. The reporters who understood the story were mostly those with previous experience covering the Middle East.
The new mantra in the media industry is that mid-size papers must go local, local, local to grow circulation. Readers who want more foreign news can go to the Web. As The Inquirer's publisher, Brian Tierney, told Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz: "I can get what's going on in Iraq online. What I can't get is what's happening in this region."
But how long will readers be able to get substantive foreign news online? Content on the Web doesn't drop from heaven. So far, there are no Web zines that maintain correspondents abroad. If you want in-depth foreign reporting, you probably go to the Web site of one of the so-called national papers that still maintain foreign bureaus, such as the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.
Yet the same economic pressures driving mid-size papers to close foreign bureaus are also squeezing big papers; both the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune may soon be sold. Who knows how long these papers will maintain all their foreign outposts?
Get your news from blogs? Those that comment on foreign affairs also depend on mainstream media for their information. With more newspapers closing foreign bureaus, will we soon depend on a shrinking pool of foreign correspondents to inform the whole country? Or will most Americans come to view the world through the prism of partisan bloggers who don't feel the need for facts?
Perhaps I'm being alarmist. Maybe the last Americans who want foreign news will keep the New York Times afloat, or pay some Web site to open foreign bureaus.
But look back at the coverage of the Iraq story, and you'll see that some of the bravest, most informative analysis was done by correspondents from mid-size papers. Far from operating as a pack, correspondents complemented each other, often searching out stories overlooked by their colleagues. With fewer correspondents, readers will get a narrower perspective. Would you have wanted all your Iraq WMD stories to come from ex-New York Times reporter Judith Miller?
As this coverage shrinks, Americans' ability to assess government actions abroad will also shrink. As the pool of experienced foreign correspondents disappears, Web aggregators will lose their key source.
I can't believe that's what the public wants, given recent election results. If I'm right, newspaper readers will have to make their concerns known.
If ever there was a column in need of a BARF alert....
I'm curious. Has Trudy written one column extolling the courage of the men and women of our armed forces in Iraq? One column?
Trudy will look good in a burkah.
Trudy must be talking about the Al Jazeera reporters she gets her copy from.
They need to be arrested for working with the enemy. How many American soldiers have been killed while they stood watching with their Islamic buddies.
"The media give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States, rally their troops against us, and unite the American people in opposition to military measures necessary for victory."
So very true!!!!!! You can see it happen!! and you said...
"Because the few American media personnel in Iraq all collude and lack meaningful competition, the American people never will hear---"
But why? It can't be "just because they hate Bush".
I'm reading what SandRat is posting/pinging -- article after article of the positive that is happening in Iraq....
1. Leaders working toward security handover, dismantling al Qaeda in Iraq
2. Sailors save young girl's life
3. Iraqi Army, Coalition Detain, Kill Insurgents; Iraqis Killed in Suicide Attack
3. DoD Promoting Businesses Owned by Wounded Vets
4. U.S. Military to Boost Trainers for Iraqi Army, Police, General Says
5. Outdated Images of Detention Center, Mission Frustrate Guantanamo Troopers
6. Iraqis to Command Four Northern Divisions by February, U.S. General Says
7. Marine moms prepare Christmas gift packages for deployed soldiers.
the above from the last 2 days!!! Why is this being ignored! I can't understand.
Looks like Trudy had too much pig at the luau.
This article is simply self promotion at the expense of the competition. Bloggers hate the MSM and the MSM hates bloggers. Why, because one is a legitimate alternative of the other. Blog commentary is by far superior to print commentary in terms of flexibility. There are no editors to filter out articles outside of a current or prospective readership. Blogs are not subject to space requirements. Newspapers require zero technical expertise. They are two very different animals that actually compliment each other - but that doesn't quell the mutual hatred. The core of this author’s argument is that the information of her media is superior to the information contained in other media. I don’t believe her. She is right about a corollary point. The fewer journalists you have, the fewer stories are going to get coverage. But the trade off is to do with career journalists who sacrifice tough questions for access. Bloggers produce far more information most of which is lower quality so skepticism becomes a part of the process of searching for information. It is harder to crosscheck an article in print than a blog so… I think I’ll stick to blogging.
Those seven stories all seem to come from what the press considers "unreliable propaganda" of their enemy (who incidentally defends to the death their right to print rubbish). None of them contain several Democrat/terrorist talking points, and none come from "reliable, unbiased sources" that we properly call our Islamofascist terrorist enemies. The media in Iraq collect and distribute enemy propaganda to us and espionage to the enemy. To take sides with the Americans or to oppose or question our enemies constitutes a breach of "journalistic ethics," the unwritten code that compels the press to collude in the collection and dissemination of enemy propaganda as irrefutable truth to the exclusion of anything reflecting reality. Incessant hawking of demonstrably false enemy propaganda, however, wins a Pulitzer Prize.
"To take sides with the Americans or to oppose or question our enemies constitutes a breach of "journalistic ethics," the unwritten code that compels the press to collude in the collection and dissemination of enemy propaganda as irrefutable truth to the exclusion of anything reflecting reality. Incessant hawking of demonstrably false enemy propaganda, however, wins a Pulitzer Prize."
What you say is correct, however, it is more than just that!
The msm and the Democrats have something much stronger than the "I hate Bush" and goals of Pulitzer prizes campaign going. And the results are our men and women are dying because of it. That is unforgivable.
I can't figure out what to do about it!!!! So discouraging when you read all that SandRat puts up on FreeRepublic, so much good is happening - not only the good deeds but the war also has results. And so few are listening of know.
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