Posted on 02/02/2005 8:45:02 PM PST by Cornpone
MUCH like a swarm of locusts, darkening the skies in their descent upon a lush, crop-rich field, the US news media converge in unison when a well-signalled event demands their coverage: just as they arrived in Iraq, and departed again, in precise formation this past week for the tormented country's first democratic elections.
Reporting in such danger zones for a world-leading television network demands a particular kind of personality: not just brave but grandiloquent, not just quick-witted but inclined to narcissism. Hence the self-reflexive quality of much of the reporting that poured out of Baghdad and the other cities of Iraq over the election weekend, as celebrity correspondents filed their on-camera pieces: the stories produced were as much about the heroism of the authors as their subjects.
In truth, though, this was the best and safest week to pay a journalistic visit to Iraq, and the risks run by news teams were much lower than normal. Over the past month, a frantic effort to crush the insurgency has been waged by American and Iraqi troops. During the election period, a strict curfew was enforced and the chances of direct militant attack on media crews were remote.
Polling day figured in the mainstream American TV media as an upbeat story, with a clearly agreed line: freedom triumphed, with the liberty-loving Iraqi people defying the insurgency to cast their ballots, while news teams, equally brave, hovered in their flak jackets on the sidelines. It was probably the best-planned large-scale media deployment to a conflict zone ever mounted.
But the infrastructure that determines much of this news gathering tends to remain discreetly in the shadows, much like the political assumptions that lurk unstated behind the news bulletins.
American audiences understand, of course, that the reporters they see on their TV screens are backed up by an army of assistants -- but they may not appreciate just how distant and mediated the contact between the news crews and the outside world remains.
Several critical filters rest between the standard visiting journalist in the Arab world and their subject matter.
First, in nations such as Iraq, safety now dictates an escort of security guards, who will accompany the reporter everywhere, their sheer presence changing the quality of the environment. Safety also limits the amount of time news teams can afford to spend on the street, the theatre where life in these ultra-social communities unfolds. All that the newly arrived TV team will see of Baghdad is a heavily fortified hotel compound and a convention centre where specially arranged briefings for the foreign media are held, in synchrony with US east coast deadlines. The iron cage of formula descends.
Many large networks have tried to adopt techniques for overcoming this limitation. They employ local camera crews, who are often dispatched, at some risk, beyond the safety zone to take footage of the aftermath of bombings or explosions. This picturesque film will then be screened, accompanied by commentaries by the Western reporters back in the security compound -- a procedure that introduces a disquieting degree of distance between journalist and subject.
Safety also lies behind the next common filter: the practice known as embedding, under which a journalist covering a conflict zone such as Iraq travels with, and shares the experiences and perspectives of, the coalition armed forces. Embedded reporting is, almost by definition, compromised at its core, since the view from the other side of the gun-barrel or the razor-wire can never be seen by the "embed". Much of the standard coverage of the run-up to the Iraqi election was provided by network teams operating in concert with American military groups in restive areas of the country.
Almost all the critical analysis of embedding has focused on the tendency of escorted reporters to favour the world-view of the forces they travel with. But the flaw in the method is more fundamental: for the "embed" never even sees a world where his accompanying detachment is not part of the picture. Reporting under these conditions is like trying to describe a landscape when it is in the grip of a thunderstorm.
The third filter, yet more devastating in its impact on clear reporting, is the language problem. Almost none of the high-profile journalists who operate in the Arab world speak more than a few words of Arabic -- one of the world's most rhetorical and emotional languages, a language made for politics and the artful expression of personal opinion. The networks rely exclusively on "fixers" and local intriguers for their access to well-placed interview subjects, but the reporters and writers can never speak to those subjects in their own tongue. The journalist, in other words, has no privileged access to the world he is describing: he is merely a spectator receiving one possible translation of the words he retails.
All these factors constrain news coverage of momentous episodes such as the Iraq elections and tend to flatten out and simplify complex chains of cause and effect. TV current affairs, by its nature, also tends to select a dominant version of events, and to select material that justifies this master-narrative -- and this editing becomes much more pronounced with each new filter designed to screen the world.
A last factor magnifies these distortions: the US networks are seen by politicians in countries such as Iraq as key components of the US power structure, and are treated accordingly. Iraqis naturally, through caution or politeness, refrain from telling American journalists hard truths about their country. And this pervasive tendency helps explain one of the most puzzling mysteries of recent journalism in Iraq: the vast difference between the perspective of reports filed by US networks and those sent by other TV crews. For even the most skilled and able US TV reporters have difficulty in uncovering one of the most critical aspects of Iraq today: the extent to which, over the past 20 months of occupation, the American troops have gradually become hated by the people at large.
It is in this systematic mischaracterisation of the image of the US in Iraq today that the US networks have had their deepest influence: for this particular blindness has been transmitted deep into American policy-making. In a darker way than they realise, the US correspondents who parachuted into Iraq and declared electoral victory this week are at the very centre of the world events they aim to capture for their home audience.
Is it just me or is this article just another example of a journalist at war with the truth?
Doesn't sound too darned friendly to me.
You're right on that one. My interest in the article was how it exposed how our MSM has become so detached from reality. Sorry if I missed the ball. I'll ask Admin to pull if you suggest.
Every line drips with left-wing elitism. He's not able to accept the fact that the elections were a success, so he assumes it must be that the supposedly right-wing American media's coverage was biased. And, of course, the media in all the other countries isn't biased, only big bad America's. This is the type of person who think's CNN is a shill for the Bush administration. He'd rather listen to al-Jazeera for a more even-handed point of view.
Please pull post. Reason: Poster's request.
It's an interesting article. Always valuable to see what others say about us. Maybe the parenthetical part of the headline could be removed?
It's not that important. I just read this totally different than some. I got the sense this guy is out in the trenches and he's disgusted with the MSM who have an increasingly distorted view of the situation. Thanks anyway.
I think this journalist is simply cr*apped off that his paper didn't think he was good enough to send to Iraq for a first-hand report, and he had to read about it from US sources.
Either that, or he's broken hearted the civil war the media in Oz predicted, didn't break out. Too much security hurt his predictions and pride, evidently.
PS. (I can say that because I'm an Aussie myself.)
He's already there: the Australian's Middle East correspondent
Oi! So what? He's got a hat with 'middle east correspondent' written on the front. Doesn't mean he's left the office.
Doesn't matter.
The majority of the e-mails from soldiers in Iraq, and from the guys/gals coming home tell a different story than the MSM.
This is what makes Iraq so different from Vietnam. During Nam, the story told by returning soldiers was horrific. Not so much so with Iraq.
Basically, it seems like most of the MSM reporters huddle together in a few hotels, and the insurgents, seeking camera time, obligingly attack those hotels.
Well, the author picks a fight with the poodle people that are the US media talking heads/anchor men. That's okay. They are vain and vaccuous hair-sprayed coconuts.
He then picks on embeds - not so sharp. They at least let us see a point of view contrary to that obtained form the hotel balcony window. Plus, they let us see an American perspective.
He is just a bitter man out to pour Koala piss in everyone's coffee.
None of the journalists speak Arabic? You mean they are too lazy to recruit an Arab speaking American?
Of course, the arab speaking American is more likely to be a Christian or Jew...maybe that is the reason.
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