It’s a deadly war for journalists, too

May 30, 2006

Greg Sargent at The American Prospect’s new media blog, The Horse’s Mouth, raised a really good point today about conservatives who criticize the media for Iraq coverage, not necessarily because it’s overly negative, but because the individual reporters are allegedly unwilling to leave their hotel rooms and see all the happy Iraqis.

As Laura Ingraham recently explained, journalists should engage Iraqis one-on-one, “instead of reporting from hotel balconies about the latest IEDs going off.” It’s a common sentiment among conservatives, several of whom felt compelled to organize a “truth tour” last summer in order to report from Iraq on how terrific conditions were.

The incident yesterday regarding a CBS News crew highlighted just how dangerous reporting from Iraq can be, but the far-right’s complaints about “reporting from hotel balconies” appear even more ridiculous when you consider the death toll among journalists.

By some reckonings, the death of two journalists working for CBS News on Monday firmly secured the Iraq war as the deadliest conflict for reporters in modern times.

Since the start of the war in 2003, 71 journalists have been killed in Iraq, a figure that does not even include the more than two dozen members of news media support staff who have also died, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That number is more than the 63 killed in Vietnam, the 17 killed in Korea, and even the 69 killed in World War II, according to Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan free speech advocacy group.

“It is absolutely striking,” said Ann Cooper, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. While cautioning that the recorded number of journalists killed in past conflicts may be inexact, she said: “We talk to veteran war correspondents who have covered everything going back to Vietnam and through Bosnia. Even those who have seen a number of different wars say they have never seen something like this conflict.”

Sargent argued that the NYT article would no doubt lead Ingraham and her cohorts to “harangue journalists into putting themselves in harm’s way in Iraq more often, not less,” but for everyone’s sake, let’s hope news outlets ignore the complaints.

Which Fox News reporters are out in the streets of Iraq with cameras interviewing happy people who are thrilled to see America remove their evil dictator? Can we draft Bill O’reilly and Sean Hannity to spend a week in the streets of Tikrit and Baghdad showing conservatives how well the war is going? What about Geraldo Rivera? Maybe if we told him one of the houses in a particular area of Baghdad contains Sadam’s secret vault he’ll go!

  • The problem is not putting journalists in the field. Many journalists roamed all over Vietnam and gave what some pro-war types regard as too much coverage (you mean we really napalm little children?).

    The problem is that the Iraq quagmire is entirely of George W. Bush’s making, of his psychotic need to appear to be a “war president” (in spite his whole administration being draft-dodging wimps). The factions were controlled (albeit brutally) by Saddam. The regime was terribly weakened by Bush père‘s invasion and immediate withdrawal and by subsequent oversight by Clinton.

    Far from “winning hearts and minds”, in Iraq we’ve become the sole focus for the disparate factions’ hatred. No wonder we’re confined to the Green Zone and invite trouble when we leave it. And since we have no plans to “win” (we already did that, in a way), and none to withdraw — and most Democrats don’t have the balls to challenge the policy or the leadership — it’s likely to stay this way for a long, long time.

  • MN Progressive,
    Excellent point. Ingram considers herself a journalist does she not? She should volunteer to go if she thinks that the journalists there aren’t doing their job.

  • Ed is right as always. However, the “issue” here is that we act like there is an issue at all. This is just GOP style spin: ask about a terrible war, get “liberal media” in response. And what do Dems do? Try and respond to the new issue, which was the entire point. Of course the media isn’t “liberal,” and they are going out into the field (and dying, for heck’s sake). So what? What is proven when you convince people of that, assuming you can? Nothing. Since the entire point was to distract from the original issue, the war, the GOP machine wins the debate either way.

    So when you hear, “it’s better than the liberal media reports,” respond with something other than the media. Try something like, President Bush knowingly misled the country into war with Iraq, a secular regime that did not support terrorists.” Or maybe, “President Bush betrayed our trust and defends liars and thieves. President Bush is a product of Enron.” Etc., etc. Get people back on issues that matter, not issues that are put into play specifically to hide the real, condemning issues.

    Anyone else seen “Thanks for Smoking”?

    Just a thought.

  • If the reporters are all reporting from their hotel balconies, then why have more of them died in this war than in either World War II and Vietnam? Are the insurgent snipers so good that they can pick these reporters off sipping their morning lattes on those same balconies?

    Wow, now that’s impressive

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