Real reporting on what the soldiers think
Behold, an actual piece of real journalism: AP reporters actually interviewed real soldiers in Baghdad about the wisdom of escalating the fighting with more troops. Although some believed more soldiers would help, more typical of those opinions reported was this:
"I don't know what could help at this point," said Roberts, 22, of Paonia, Colo. "What would more guys do? We can't pick sides. It's almost like we have to watch them kill each other, then ask questions."
posted by KISSWeb | 3:56 PM
4 Comments:
I'm still looking for evidence that the Shia-Sunni divide isn't really the cause of most of the violence in Iraq (as you have theorized). This piece fails to offer it -- the opposite, in fact, if the troops' own views are at all correct, and why should they be? -- but you do seem to accept the accuracy of this bit of reporting by the dreaded MSM. And in one of its most virulent forms, the AP. Just sayin'...
And another thing. As a working member of the SOOTMSM (Slightly Out Of The Main Stream Media), I have to object to the currently fashionable Left-Bloggy habit of sneering at "actual journalism" when something that conforms to their prejudices appears in the press. I'll take a back seat to no one in disparaging the frequently poor performance of many reporters and editors at the NY Times, WaPo, AP, CNN, various BCs and BSs -- the most influential of the MSM. But that doesn't mean all journalism is defective, or even that most is, even at those venues. Bloggers would be nowhere without them, after all. So, yes, criticism is good, but disdain is unwarranted. Like Somerby, I'd correct your post here to read "Behold, an actual piece of real journalism by the AP. [As if that isn't what they give us hourly.] Reporters actually interviewed real soldiers in Baghdad about the wisdom of escalating the fighting with more troops...." Of course, the soldiers who told Gates what the Administration wanted to hear a few days ago -- that, yes, a surge is just what they hope for -- were real too, even if likely parrots picked for their eagerness to please. Reporting their comments, I'm sorry to inform you, was itself "real journalism." So, bottom line, quit the kneejerk disparagement of MSM reporters (who are risking their fucking lives in Baghdad and doing their best in DC and Chicago and Sacramento and even out of the WSJ's newsroom); make clear distinctions among journalists on the one hand and editorialists and "pundits" and op-ed contributors on the other; and finally, target your barbs at specific lapses with specific language. Who, indeed, are you to sneer that a reporter has committed "an actual piece of real journalism" just because the message -- as inherently subjective as could be -- was one you agree with?
And still another thing. You're cooking, KISSweb. Keep those posts coming. Critical reaction is the sincerest form of flattery.
Picky, picky, picky.
It was not so much that it conformed to my prejudices -- I can see if I were there I might like more troops around just as protection -- but that it did not conform to stories that failed to report the obviously contrived circumstances of the initial stories designed to gather public support for the only change left for the President. The wire-service stories as I recall also did not make any attempt to evaluate the representativeness of those opinions. That seems like sheer stenography to me, not real journalism. It seems to me the only real journalism on this war has come in books like Ricks's and Suskind's. Real journalism would include prominent and frequent reporting of how impossible doing real journalism is when you are mostly stuck in the Green Zone or embedded with troops -- if that's the case, which due to the sparseness of "actual journalism" still is unclear. I don't particularly fault the lonely reporters themselves dealing with the hand dealt to them, but with the editors -- not one of whom as far as I can tell has chosen to make a stink over mandates from the publishers. I can't see that American journalism has done itself proud over this episode in our history.
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