The truth, the whole truth
If you rely on newspapers and tv networks for your news, chances are you have no idea that the controversial performance of western reporters in Iraq is emerging as a big issue. The mainstream media have virtually ignored the stunning charges made by John Burns, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times. But those charges are all over the Internet and carried by Fox News and conservative commentators.
In the new book Embedded, Burns says the vast majority of correspondents in prewar Iraq played ball with Saddam Hussein and downplayed the viciousness of the regime. He says Iraq was "a grotesque charnel house" and a genuine threat to America, but to protect their access, the reporters did not tell the truth. Burns names no names (he should now), but he is particularly contemptuous of the BBC and CNN.
Burns's comments are echoed by those of U.S. District Court Judge Don Walter of Shreveport, La. This is another Internet-only story that you aren't likely to find in newspapers. Walter was vehemently antiwar but changed his mind after an assignment in Iraq as a U.S. adviser on Iraq's courts. He says we should have invaded sooner to halt the incredible butchery and torture that the United Nations, France, and Russia knew all about and were quite willing to tolerate. And he is distressed by the reporting on Iraq now: "The steady drip, drip, drip of bad news may destroy our will to fulfill the obligations we have assumed. WE ARE NOT GETTING THE WHOLE TRUTH FROM THE NEWS MEDIA." (Capitals are his.)
Some members of Congress are sounding the same theme. Georgia Democrat Jim Marshall says negative media coverage is getting our troops in Iraq killed and encouraging Baathist holdouts to think they can drive the United States out. Marshall, a Vietnam vet, said there is "a disconnect between the reporting and the reality," partly because the 27 reporters left in Iraq are "all huddled in a hotel."
Marshall and a bipartisan group of six other representatives just returned from Iraq. The lawmakers charged that reporters have developed an overall negative tone and a "police blotter" mind-set stressing attacks and little else. Ranking member Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, said he found the creativeness and flexibility of the U.S. forces impressive, including their 3,100 projects in northern Iraq, from soccer fields to schools to refineries, "all good stuff, and that isn't being reported."
The campaign for more balance in Iraq reporting has been driven by Internet bloggers, notably Andrew Sullivan (AndrewSullivan.com) and law Prof. Glenn Reynolds of the University of Tennessee (Instapundit.com). Reynolds deplores "the lazy Vietnam-templating, the `of course America must be losing' spin, the implicit and sometimes explicit sneer."
Safer. Both Reynolds and Sullivan encourage U.S. soldiers and others in Iraq to send in their own reports, which have generally been positive and hopeful. "I don't trust most of the journalists, I'm afraid," Sullivan wrote in a July appeal for firsthand accounts. Letters home from Iraq are now regularly put up on the Internet. One last week from Senior Chief Petty Officer Art Messer of the Navy Seabees said: "The countryside is getting more safe by the day despite all the attacks you are hearing about. Imagine if every shooting incident or robbery committed in Los Angeles was blown out of proportion."
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