(Originally published in Nieman Watchdog)
By Sig Christenson
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Call it a Katrina Moment, the hour where unbelievable lies passed off as official truth and slander against journalists sparks spontaneous outrage in the ranks.
Think of it as PETA member watching a certain NFL quarterback electrocuting a bloody dog and you get an idea of how mad some of us scribes in harm’s way get.
That’s pretty much what happened when Sen. John McCain, fresh from touring a Baghdad market, suggested that we war correspondents haven’t reported the good news in Iraq.
“The new political-military strategy is beginning to show results," McCain, R-Ariz., wrote in the April 8 edition of the Washington Post. “But most Americans are not aware because much of the media are not reporting it or devote far more attention to car bombs and mortar attacks that reveal little about the strategic direction of the war.
“I am not saying that bad news should not be reported or that horrific terrorist attacks are not newsworthy. But news coverage should also include evidence of progress.”
I was in Baghdad the day he toured the market and knew better. Of course, it wasn’t anything new in the propaganda war for right-wing hearts and minds but it was so laughable.
As Iraq correspondents know from hard experience, the simple act of entering a relatively pacified area of the city – say the once-notoriously violent Haifa Street – last spring required a long line of Army gun trucks and heavily armed soldiers.
So, too, did McCain’s Shorja market dog-and-pony show.
Republican Rep. Mike Pence likened the place to “a normal outdoor market in Indiana,” his home state.
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 abortive 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.”
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