Iraq Reporters Hit Back at Claims They Are Biased on War
from Editor and Publisher
NEW YORK After the latest round of blaming the media for distorted coverage in Iraq, which emerged this week from top Bush administraton officials, war reporters and editors strongly defended their coverage this weekend in a variety of venues, as violence in the country reached new levels.
Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru, who recently completed a 14-month stint in Iraq, commented: "Everyone wants to read their view of the war in your story. To me the only issue is whether our stories are real or not. I never got complaints from the people who were involved in the subject matter of the stories.
"The job of soldiering over there is incredibly difficult. I have tremendous respect for those guys. The criticism completely misses the point. Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Where's the good news?"
Writing in The New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman traced the recent upsurge in sadistic killings, then commented: "If this all sounds depressing, it is. That's how people here feel. I've been looking hard, but in two weeks I haven't found an Iraqi optimist.
"In the summer of 2004, I profiled a band of young artists who braved dangerous roads to get away from Baghdad and paint pretty pictures of the Tigris River. Now, they're homebound. There is a similar sense of newfound hopelessness in the faces of the Iraqis I work with....It is difficult to communicate just how violent Baghdad has become."
Clark Hoyt, Washington editor for Knight Ridder, in a commentary piece, wrote, “Our reporting tells us that it's true that there are areas of Iraq -- in the Shiite south and the Kurdish north -- where people walk the streets in relative peace. But Baghdad, Iraq's capital and most populous city, and the Sunni Triangle to its northwest are hellishly dangerous. And that lack of security has overshadowed everything else as Iraqis struggle to build a democratic future.”
Appearing on NBC, its Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel said, “Most Iraqis I speak to say, ‘Actually most reporters get it wrong--it’s the situation on the ground is actually worse than the images we project on television.’"
(The remainder of the article is here.)
NEW YORK After the latest round of blaming the media for distorted coverage in Iraq, which emerged this week from top Bush administraton officials, war reporters and editors strongly defended their coverage this weekend in a variety of venues, as violence in the country reached new levels.
Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru, who recently completed a 14-month stint in Iraq, commented: "Everyone wants to read their view of the war in your story. To me the only issue is whether our stories are real or not. I never got complaints from the people who were involved in the subject matter of the stories.
"The job of soldiering over there is incredibly difficult. I have tremendous respect for those guys. The criticism completely misses the point. Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Where's the good news?"
Writing in The New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman traced the recent upsurge in sadistic killings, then commented: "If this all sounds depressing, it is. That's how people here feel. I've been looking hard, but in two weeks I haven't found an Iraqi optimist.
"In the summer of 2004, I profiled a band of young artists who braved dangerous roads to get away from Baghdad and paint pretty pictures of the Tigris River. Now, they're homebound. There is a similar sense of newfound hopelessness in the faces of the Iraqis I work with....It is difficult to communicate just how violent Baghdad has become."
Clark Hoyt, Washington editor for Knight Ridder, in a commentary piece, wrote, “Our reporting tells us that it's true that there are areas of Iraq -- in the Shiite south and the Kurdish north -- where people walk the streets in relative peace. But Baghdad, Iraq's capital and most populous city, and the Sunni Triangle to its northwest are hellishly dangerous. And that lack of security has overshadowed everything else as Iraqis struggle to build a democratic future.”
Appearing on NBC, its Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel said, “Most Iraqis I speak to say, ‘Actually most reporters get it wrong--it’s the situation on the ground is actually worse than the images we project on television.’"
(The remainder of the article is here.)
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