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Bad reporting in Iraq

Strategy Page:

“Sir, if I got my news from the newspapers also, I’d be pretty depressed as well.” – Captain Sherman Powell to Matt Lauer, Today, 8/17/05

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What is happening in Iraq is a failure by the media to give the American people relevant information. This has probably colored public opinion on the liberation of Iraq. The media’s failure has come in two areas. First, it has failed to provide the news in context, often focusing on negatives. Second, it has not brought evidence to the American people that would place the initial decision to go in into context. Both of these failures have occurred often enough that one cannot be blamed for wondering if a pattern of deception, by omission, is not occurring.

The term “deception by omission” might sound harsh, but it is accurate. Deception does not need the active misrepresentation of facts, it can occur when someone fails to reveal something relevant to the situation – particularly when the people leaving out some of the facts are advocating a specific course of action (such as withdrawal from Iraq ).

For instance, the media has often failed to report many of the successes. This was a major complaint voiced by at least two columnists who have served in Iraq. In the first case, the complaint is about the lack of good news ( schools opened, rehabilitation of infrastructure neglected by Saddam Hussein, and other news items that don’t have the suddenness and shock value of a car bombing). The second complaint is that the “police blotter” coverage often obscures the “big picture” of what is going on. This is quite important as well. The insurgents offer little more beyond murder, mayhem, and terror.

The second, and more serious matter is the fact that the media has flat-out omitted several pieces of information that tend to back up the decision to go to war and put to rest claims that President Bush lied. Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard has documented the connections between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda. This has been a constantly repeated pattern.

In April, 2003, a pair of journalists discovered a memo in which the Mukhabarat wanted to bring over a representative of Osama bin Laden to discuss “the future of our relationship with him”. The memo in question went through five translations before the article was published, and the reporter in question, Mitch Potter, admitted that he had been skeptical of the claims.

There is much more and it is worth the read.

Update: Michael Yon reports on Ltc. Kurilla's observation from his hospital:

As the Deuce Four heads home this week, they leave behind a Mosul that, while not yet in the clear, is much closer to security and prosperity than anyone would have considered possible eight months ago. In between the daily secret reports Kurilla has brought to his hospital room so he can track his battalion, the Commander watches television news, increasingly frustrated by what he sees as a clear, and inaccurate, negative bias. “When you get the news back here in the states, it’s all doom and body counts. I only wish the American public could see the incredible progress that is being made every day in Iraq, particularly in places like Mosul.” (Emphasis added.)