For the better part of 2006, the Bush gang and their allies have decided that the key to public support for the war in Iraq — or what’s left of it — is blaming the media. In March, for example, Dick Cheney said, “There is a constant sort of perception, if you will, that’s created because what’s newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad.” Shortly thereafter, Donald Rumsfeld added, “Fortunately, history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack.” At a presidential conference in the spring, Bush didn’t note the bad news in Iraq, he noted “the bad news on television.” At one of the president’s sycophantic public events, a Bush supporter won a round of uproarious applause when she insisted that “our major media networks don’t want to portray the good.”
The reality, of course, is that too many on the right have the problem backwards. They’re “working the refs,” hoping that if they whine loudly enough, news outlets will be less likely to report on how disastrous the war has become. To a certain extent, it’s working; many reporters have been cowed.
But we nevertheless get a glimpse, now and then, from a reporter who knows better. NBC correspondent Richard Engel reported earlier this year that the situation on the ground “is actually worse than the images we project on television.” Over the weekend, CNN’s John Roberts shared a similar perspective.
CNN’s John Roberts, recently returned from a month-long visit to Iraq, was interviewed by The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz for his CNN “Reliable Sources” program on Sunday. Much of the talk concerned media treatment of the war, starting with complaints by U.S. soldiers, and then the overall media coverage.
Roberts revealed that despite some charges to the contrary, military personnel did not have a problem with the coverage and, in fact, the situation on the ground is an “absolute mess,” worse than the media has shown. “The amount of death that’s on the streets of Baghdad for U.S. forces and for the Iraqi people is at an astronomical level,” he said. “So, to some degree, what we’re seeing is sanitized.”
Kurtz, unfortunately, approached the issue by stacking the deck, telling Roberts, “The conventional wisdom is that American troops resent the media’s coverage of this war as too negative.” It was an unhelpful way to start the discussion — it’s only the “conventional wisdom” because media figures like Kurtz keep repeating it as if it were fact. Fortunately, Roberts would have none of it.
ROBERTS: You know, I spent a lot of time with U.S. troops. In the month that I was there, I spent probably two weeks or a little bit more than that on the ground with them, north of Baghdad, in Baghdad, traveling with a lot of the Stryker units who had been there for 16 months now.
They were very optimistic on the unit level about what they were doing. They believed in the mission that they were undertaking — you know, clearing operations, trying to secure thee streets of Baghdad, trying to get some of the weapons off the streets, trying to deal with these militia members who are the cause of so much of this sectarian violence.
When they stepped back, though, and took a look at the larger picture, there were a lot of questions about where the direction was headed, where they were going to go in the future…
KURTZ: And did they think…
ROBERTS: … whether the plan immediately was the right plan.
KURTZ: And did they think the coverage, generally, on balance, was fair or unfair?
ROBERTS: You know, they didn’t seem to have too many complaints about the coverage. They appreciated the fact that we were there, and anytime you’re embedded with U.S. forces, you’re going to see the bad along with the good.
They were always trying to put a positive spin on things from a command level. You know, taking us to certain areas to show us certain things they thought would play well. But by and large, I didn’t hear any complaints about the coverage.
So, why aren’t news outlets reporting on the actual conditions? Why is it even worse than it seems?
ROBERTS: Because television can’t — and even print — can’t fully capture the scope of what’s going on in Iraq. And to some degree, too, over the last three-and-a-half years, Howie, it’s become the daily traffic report, the daily drumbeat.
When you get there and you see it on a personal level, when you watch somebody die before your eyes, it gives you a much different perspective on it than it does being a half a world away, reading about it or watching it on television. Also, you know, the pictures on television are sanitized compared to what they are on the ground.
For example, when we came across that IED attack, we did not shoot pictures that we would show on television of the carnage. We showed pictures of people carrying litters, et cetera, because it’s, A, it’s too raw for television. B, it’s too personal for the families who were involved, because the fellow who I saw on the ground, Howie, he was ripped apart. And that’s just not the sort of thing that you want a family to know.
If a loved one died in Iraq, they died in Iraq. You don’t need to show them the graphic pictures of it. So, to some degree, what we’re seeing is sanitized.
The video of Roberts’ interview is online. It’s worth remembering for the next time conservatives start blaming the media for the public’s opposition to the war.