WHAT'S GOING ON IN IRAQ?

by Virginia Postrel  •  Sep 23, 2003 at 8:14 am

http://www.dynamist.com/482/what-going-on-in-iraq

USA Today media critic Peter Johnson looks at the question of systematic bad-news bias in reporting from Iraq.

Is the cup half full or half empty in Iraq?

Just as opinions about the war and its aftermath vary widely, reporters in Baghdad disagree about what it's like in Iraq these days.

Although some paint a picture of recovery, with U.S. armed forces making progress in getting the country going again, others sketch a bleaker scene, in which bombings, ambushes and looting are the rule, not the exception.

Reporters agree on this much: Bad news -- not good -- sells."It's the nature of the business," Time's Brian Bennett says. "What gets in the headlines is the American soldier getting shot, not the American soldiers rebuilding a school or digging a well."

Read the whole article.

The bottom line: There's good news and bad news, not a single coherent narrative, and different reporters perceive the story differently--not because they're necessarily biased for or against U.S. efforts but because they have different experiences and weight different information differently. All of which explains why I don't, from my perch in the United States, opine on the "real" situation in Iraq. Like the "real" situation in the United States, it's complicated and contains many contradictions. Reporters on the scene owe their audiences the messy details, even when they won't fit into a neat narrative predicting either certain victory or an inevitable quagmire.