Why War Reporting Is So Skewed

[Annie]

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20060925.aspx

Outsourcing Combat Reporting to the Enemy
September 25, 2006: U.S. troops continue to be mystified at the odd reporting coming out of Iraq. What the troops witnessed is not what reporters are sending back. The bylines on those stories are American, as are the talking heads they see broadcasting from Baghdad. Some troops attribute the inaccurate reporting to bias, with journalists sending back what they want to be the truth, rather than what is actually happening. The troops see a very different Iraq from the one journalists are reporting.

But the fact of the matter is that few of these journalists are reporting much. On any given day, fewer than a dozen reporters are embedded with combat units, and actually out there. A third or more of these are working for military oriented publications ("Stars and Stripes," Armed Forces Network). Most journalists are in the Green Zone, or some well-guarded hotel. There, they depend on Iraqi stringers to gather information, and take pictures for them. In reality, these reporters could do this from back home, and many more media organizations are doing just that.

Nothing new about using local stringers in dangerous areas. It's common sense, given that the bad guys are in the habit of kidnapping, or just killing, foreign reporters. The problem is, the pool of available Iraqi talent is mostly Sunni Arab. Many of these folks side with the bad guys. And all Iraqi journalists, especially those working for foreigners, are subject to intimidation, or bribery. While some of the foreign reporters may be aware of all this, some aren't, and many of the rest don't care. The truth won't set them free, but supplying stories their editors are looking for, will.

It wasn't always this way, but that's the way it is these days. And, sadly, about the only people to notice the problem are the many troops who have been in Iraq, and don't have an editor telling them what to think, and report.

Whoops

http://pajamasmedia.com/2006/09/how_many_embedded_reporters_co.php

How Many Embedded Reporters Cover the Iraq War? (A Pajamas News Special Item)
PJM in Seattle
September 23, 2006 4:09 PM

Given the tsunami of news coming out of Iraq in the papers and on television, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the media organizations of the world must have a battalion or more of reporters assigned to cover the war. But if you guessed “one or two battalions,” you’d be far off the mark. If you guessed “several squads” you’d still be wrong.

Pajamas Media, in the course of a casual conversation with a Marine Corps information officer who tracks the number of embedded reporters in Iraq, learned the real number of embedded reporters covering the Iraq story on September 19, 2006. It was, according to the officer, a fairly typical day. To illustrate his point, he provided Pajamas Media with the illustration he uses to brief with on the state of media embedding in Iraq.

What was that number? Take a guess and then see the truth. No peeking.

If you guessed 9 reporters, you guessed right.

Here’s the chart (CLICK HERE TO VIEW) showing who the nine embedded reporters were covering all of Iraq on 9/19/2006. You’ll see that of those 9 reporters, 3 were from the Armed Forces’ Stars & Stripes, 1 from AFN (Armed Force Network), 1 from the Charlotte Observer, 1 from the BBC, 1 from the AP, 1 from RAI, and 1 from Polish Radio. All the rest of the “coverage” of the Iraq war on that day came from reporters hunkered down in the hotels and other locations under the rubric “Baghdad News Bureaus.”

So the next time you hear the phrase “reported first hand,” you might well ask, “Whose hand and where was it?”

 

[Gunny]

Why War Reporting Is So Skewed

Because the left-wing-biased media only sees one side?

 

[Annie]

Because the left-wing-biased media only sees one side?

Because it's only the right that asks to embed. Then again, there are the Michael Yons and Bill Roggios and other former military, aren't there any on the left? Guess not. Oh then again, they are not 'credible' according to a Jillian or Grump? If I'm misinterpreting, feel free to correct. (Better check them out first though).

 

[Gunny]

Because it's only the right that asks to embed. Then again, there are the Michael Yons and Bill Roggios and other former military, aren't there any on the left? Guess not. Oh then again, they are not 'credible' according to a Jillian or Grump? If I'm misinterpreting, feel free to correct. (Better check them out first though).

Thing is, Fox is just about the only major media outlet that will carry any stories that make the military or administration look good, or Heaven forbid that things might be going well in Iraq.

But yeah, I noticed only right-leaning correspondents want to imbed. It's called having "stones."