AP Coverage of Iraq

[csberry]

Why do most news articles in Iraq focus on the body count? Because it's easy!
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/business/media/15apee.html?ei=5090&en=4a4f32424faa6ab5&ex=1281758400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Comments

[outherelistenin.livejournal.com]

I don't understand the complaint. Why aren't we hearing more good news out of Iraq? Why not ask why we aren't hearing more good news out of anywhere else. Generally speaking, Bad Things Happening is news. "It was a nice breezy day and we put up a school" is very nice, but entirely less important. The death toll in Iraq is staggering. Isn't the average something like 2+ soldiers per day, and Iraqis aren't even counted.

To even ask this question implies that stories about the constant stream of deaths in Iraq constitute biased reporting. The thinking seems to be that if it makes the Bush administration look bad, the reporting must, itself, be anti-Bush and anti-war. My own thinking is that in situations like these, it's just possible that the facts themselves are biased against the policies that made such facts possible. The apparently-indefinite occupation in Iraq didn't, after all, just happen.

I saw the same questions popping up when Abu Ghraib was in the news, and that same implication that reporting on the scandal was evidence of left-wing perfidy. I also saw grown, otherwise-educated people go on television and excuse what they saw a the equivalent of college initation pranks... nevermind the deaths, nevermind all the stuff we heard about but didn't see. Nevermind the rather obvious fact that this is how America is conducting itself on the world stage, with implications for foreign relations, wartime conventions and the basic question of whether Americans are now torturing people (a) as a matter of policy or (b) for fun.

I'm not opposed to the idea of stories indicating progress being made in Iraq. Given how bad things are in the country - and if reporters are scared to get out and report lest they be killed, we can assume it's pretty bad - genuinely good news coming out of Iraq probably does qualify as "man bites dog." But such stories might well draw attention to some troubling questions, like, for instance, why, exactly, we're there in the first place, and whether we ever intend to leave.

[csberry.livejournal.com]

For me the problem isn't that AP writes death count stories. It is news and should be reported. But there is more going on in Iraq than IED, insurgents, and deaths. I usually have to go to BBC, CSM, or other news sources that have a strong international profile to find stories about Iraq stories like the new constitution, ethnic concerns of the Sunnis/Shiites/Kurds, marketplace conditions for average Iraqis, and the types of support being offered to Iraq by its neighbors.

While in talk radio, we would often spend several hours during a week on a single topic (Clinton impeachment, OJ, whatever) but each day we came up with different angles so we repeated ourselves as little as possible. If every time I hear/read a story about Iraq and it only focuses on one plotline, you get a singular vision on what is happening and aren't becoming truly informed about the situation.

MY complaint isn't about a left-wing bias, it's about lazy reporting by the AP - the primary source of news for most newspapers/TV/radio. Their own unwillingness to do the job of a warzone reporter hampers the information that Americans get. I'm sorry, but you're not supposed to get a job reporting in Iraq and then stay holed up in the Palestine Hotel. Why can the BBC and others have people out in the field but it's somehow too dangerous for the AP reporters? If you aren't willing to do it, then you shouldn't be there. A shitload of journalists were willing to risk their lives being embedded in the US military during the initial combat. That was more dangerous than the current situation...it's just not as sexy, I guess.