Good News From Iraq
ROSEMARY GOUDREAU Editorial Page Editor
Published: Aug 21, 2005
Media Consumers Demand Broader Coverage Despite The Danger
Comment on the war coverage
Multimedia report
The e-mail pops into my computer once a month or so, painting a picture of great progress in Iraq. It represents the good news we all want to hear.
Did you know that 3,100 schools have been renovated, that the Iraqi Police Service has trained and equipped 55,000 police officers or that the Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004?
The e-mail accuses the mainstream media of ignoring the good news in Iraq.
``I AM ASHAMED OF Democrats and media elite WHO WOULD RATHER SEE TERRORISM SUCCEED THAN A PRESIDENT NOT OF THEIR CHOOSING SEEM TO GET CREDIT.
``Pass it on!''
AP newsman Edward Harris walks through the rubble in Fallujah, Iraq, after a U.S. military attack to defeat Iraqi insurgents. Harris was embedded with the U.S. Marines on the mission. Photo courtesy of AFP/PATRICK BAZ
I serve on the board of a national organization of newsroom leaders called APME - Associated Press Managing Editors. We represent the editors who supervise the daily reports at American newspapers and online sites. Part of our job is to give feedback to The Associated Press, the primary source of national and international news for most of us.
In advance of our July board meeting, I suggested we discuss the criticism that the American media are not telling the nation the ``positive'' news out of Iraq.
Just two weeks earlier, the issue of media bias had rocked our industry again when Mark Yost, an editorial writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, wrote a column about ``the horribly slanted reporting coming out of Iraq.''
``I know the reporting's bad because I know people in Iraq. A Marine colonel buddy just finished a stint overseeing the power grid. When's the last time you read a story about the progress being made on the power grid? I get unfiltered news from Iraq through an e-mail network of military friends who aren't so blinded by their own politics that they can't see the real good we're doing there.''
One of the bright successes of the U.S. Security effort is in Sadr City outside Baghdad, once a hotbed of Shiite Muslim unrest. This year there's been only one car bombing and one American Soldier killed. Here Iraquis are working on a new drinking water treatment program. AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg
Clark Hoyt, the Pulitzer Prize- winning editor in charge of the Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, a division of the media company that also owns the Pioneer Press, challenged Yost's ability to understand Iraq ``from the distance and safety of St. Paul.''
``Yost asks why you don't read about progress being made in the power grid, which the colonel oversaw. Maybe it's because there is no progress. Iraqis currently have electricity for an average of nine hours a day. A year ago, they averaged 10 hours of electricity. Iraq's oil production is still below pre-war levels. The unemployment rate is between 30 and 40 percent. New cases of hepatitis have doubled over the rate of 2002, largely because of problems with getting clean drinking water and disposing of sewage.''
From a colleague in St. Paul, Yost heard pure anger: ``With your column, you have spat on the copy of the brave men and women who are doing their best in terrible conditions,'' wrote reporter Chuck Laszewski. ``I am embarrassed to call you my colleague.''
Sabotage efforts hamper oil production from Kirkuk, an area that holds 6.4 percent of the world's oil. Here, Iraqi army officers discuss pipline protections with members of the U.S Army. AP Photo/Sasa Kralj
Journalists get a little defensive when people in this country - or people who visit Iraq wrapped in security details - criticize war correspondents who risk their lives to tell the world what's going on.
That's because editors such as Hoyt and Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of The Associated Press, know the dangers Iraqi war correspondents face for even simple things like going out for water, passing a U.S. convoy on the road or picking up a package at the hotel's front desk.
The hot words people use to ascribe motive - suggesting they're cowards, lazy or, most often, as in the good-news e-mail, politically motivated - are what really irks journalists.
Yost suggested war correspondents ``want to cut and run ... and reporters wonder why they're despised.''
Last year former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz said: ``Part of our problem is a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors.''
Wolfowitz apologized two days later. ``I know that many journalists continue to go out each day - in the most dangerous circumstances - to bring us coverage of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the beginning of hostilities in Iraq, 34 journalists have given their lives; many others have been injured while bringing us that story.''
Later, on the cable talk show ``Hardball,'' Wolfowitz said he had meant to say that ``the media picture seems to be unbalanced, and I'm not the only one who's saying it.''
The day before our board meeting at the AP's new world headquarters in New York, we judged the wire service's annual contest, dominated this year by coverage of the war and the tsunami. The work is a testament to the courage and commitment that AP staffers regularly demonstrate to get the news first and right. Oddly enough, several top editors in the room noted again this year that their papers had not published some of the prize-winning stories and photos.
Iraqi police inspect the car that carried foreign journalists ambushed and killed on the outskirts of Baghdad last year. The committee to Protect journalists says 50 members of the media have been killed in the Iraqi war, including 13 so far this year. AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen
The next morning, when we began our official business, I found it uncomfortable to help start the conversation about the wholeness of the Iraq report. I have enormous respect for the two senior AP editors who were sitting at the table, and not just because they have buried three staffers in Iraq this year.
But asking tough questions is what journalists do, and given the feedback we regularly get from readers, it has become apparent that expectations for war correspondents have changed since the days when Ernie Pyle covered World War II traveling with the troops.
No longer do readers find it sufficient to cover only the battles, the lives lost, the ground taken and the governments sworn in. Today's media consumers want a faster, broader picture of what's happening in Iraq - no matter if the streets of Baghdad are deadly.
They want to understand what's happening on the reconstruction front, where soldiers also are stationed. While the war was never supposed to be about nation-building, a clear measure of its success has become the rebuilding of an Iraqi infrastructure ignored for 30 years despite the wealth of Saddam Hussein.
Americans think ``Progress!'' when they hear about soldiers working with Iraqis to rebuild schools, hospitals and the institutions that form a stable nation. Citizens complain that they're not seeing enough of these stories in the mainstream media, unaffectionately called ``MSM'' online.
Lt. Col. Steven Miles, who coordinates reconstruction efforts in Baghdad, is proud of a new $12 million base camp to train the Iraqi army. Shown here with an unnamed Iraqi captain, Mills says, "We might just be getting this right." Photo provided by SSG Anndrea L. Maple.
Some consumers are getting their war news from bloggers like Michael Yon, a freelancer embedded with soldiers in Mosul. Another popular link is Arthur Chrenkoff's ``Good News From Iraq,'' featured on Opinion Journal, the Wall Street Journal's online site.
Besides the Internet, some people get their war news from conservative radio talk show hosts, including a group of five who went to Iraq last month determined to report the good news.
And many people hear firsthand accounts from friends who've been in Iraq.
``Troops coming home are telling their friends - they're saying there's progress being made that we're not reporting,'' George Stanley, managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said during our board meeting. ``We're hearing negative reaction from people who know people who have been in Iraq.''
Mark Bowden, editor of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, summed it up well: ``The underlying question is, is progress being made in Iraq? Has the news media been able to report that? What are the bench marks? As Americans, do we understand how this country is measuring progress? And there may be no consensus on that.''
Kathleen Carroll, the AP's top editor, says, ``The measure we use is whether the people of Iraq feel there is progress and improvement in their daily lives. The picture is mixed. That's not to say it's failure. A shift in history as large as this is not going to happen overnight. There's going to be progress and regression, progress and regression.''
The measurement of progress depends on a person's perspective, she said. People in Baghdad remember having 12 hours of electricity a day. Soldiers remember when there was none. Now the average is nine. ``Whose yardstick is being used here? There's no right one. Ultimately the Iraqi people will have the yardstick. They are the people the invasion was intended to help.''
On the measure of safety, though, Carroll said, ``it's a dogfight in parts of the country.''
In such a dangerous environment, it's difficult for journalists to independently verify a lot of what's happening. They don't carry weapons. They wrestle with whether to mark their cars ``PRESS'' for fear of becoming a target.
``Just to pass a convoy on the road is dangerous,'' Carroll said. ``You either chug behind them at 4 mph, or you pass them. They don't know if you're going to suddenly turn the car. They have their guns trained on you as you go by, and you don't want to give them any reason to have any suspicions about you.''
AP International Editor Deborah Seward makes the point that the journalists best able to move freely in Baghdad are the AP's Iraqi staffers - text, photo and television. She says many were victims, along with their families, of Saddam's regime. Reporting is dangerous for them, but they are determined to capture this historic period for their country. Still, they find conditions so dangerous that they have all relocated their families outside Iraq.
Gen. John Abizaid of Tampa, in charge of the war in Iraq, is greeted by Iraq President Jalal Talabani on Thursday. Abizaid said he was very satisfied with the development of the Iraqi security forces and that in the near future the force will be able to handle the nation's security problems. AP Photo/Karim Kadim
Hannah Allam, Baghdad bureau chief for Knight-Ridder, described reporting conditions this way in an e-mail response to her critical St. Paul colleague: ``Mr. Yost can listen to our bureau's morning planning meetings, where we orchestrate a trip to buy bottled water (the tap water is contaminated, when it works) as if we're plotting a military operation.
``I wonder whether he prefers riding in the first car - the most exposed to shrapnel and bullets - or the chase car, which is designed to act as a buffer between us and potential kidnappers.''
The AP editors listened hard to us. They've heard the criticism about media bias too. Even before the meeting with our board, they'd decided to ask AP veteran correspondent Bob Reid to write a report every 10 days that assesses recent operations or overarching progress in Iraq.
``This coverage is a priority for us,'' Carroll said.
At Central Command in Tampa, Lt. Col. David Farlow, deputy director of public affairs, sees a trend when talking to reporters. ``I spend most of my time talking about the ugly and don't get much time talking about the good.
``The media needs to do a better job of painting the picture. Yes, there were this number of attacks, but there were also this number of reconstruction projects and this number signed up to be members of the Iraqi forces and this number of schools rebuilt.''
Of Iraq's 18 provinces, he said, four remain dangerous. ``Reporters in the other 14 provinces could wander around wherever they want to go. They're safer there than Ybor City at midnight.''
Knight-Ridder's Baghdad bureau chief disputes that assessment, also made by Yost in St. Paul. ``Mr. Yost's contention that 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces are stable is pure fantasy. On his visit to Baghdad, he can check that by chatting with our resident British security consultant, who every day receives a province-by-province breakdown of the roadside bombs, ambushes, assassinations and other violence throughout the country.''
At Central Command, Farlow doesn't dispute that ``Baghdad is very troubled, and the bad guys are doing everything they can to continue that perception.'' His issue is with the lack of coverage on other fronts. ``If you can't get your reporters out to cover what's going on, they're going to miss the story.''
Farlow has started facilitating what he calls ``virtual embeds'' to hook up reporters by telephone with service members in the field. ``Last week we did about 70 of these. At least I can get them on the phone with somebody who's there.''
At the beginning of the war, news organizations had about 700 actual embeds - journalists embedded in military units. Farlow says that number is minimal now.
A big reason for the reduction is that it's expensive for newspapers to try to embed a reporter with a military unit. Editors at the board meeting complained that life insurance has more than doubled since the war began - to about $25,000 for a short-term stay. Plus it costs thousands of dollars for safety training classes, body armor and transportation.
Farlow called me Tuesday after reading an article in The New York Times about the APME board meeting. On Wednesday, he helped hook me up with Lt. Col. Steven Miles, G-3 operations officer with the Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region Division.
Miles orchestrates and synchronizes rebuilding projects in Baghdad. It was 120 degrees there the day we spoke.
``I'm proud to be over here,'' he said, ``because there's kids that deserve to have this done for them. They need help.''
Miles won't say the situation is rosy, but it's promising, and the work is rewarding because you ``leave your legacy'' with engineering projects like sewage treatment plants and electric transmission systems.
The United States is going to spend $10 billion to help rebuild Iraq - about $160 in taxes from the average American family of four - and Miles gets to be there when long- suffering Iraqis hear their community will benefit. How can that not be good news?
``The people working on the projects, you can see in their face how proud they are. They don't have the resources to build these facilities. That's what we've brought in, from the gracious American people who are helping them rebuild.''
Miles describes arriving in Sadr City after a sewage pump lift station was completed. Power from two dedicated Caterpillar generators finally kept sewage from overflowing into the city. ``I wasn't sure how the local people would receive us in downtown Sadr City, but everyone from the adults to the children was waving. I said, `We've come a long way in Sadr City.' ''
One of Miles' best memories is visiting a $12 million base camp built for training the Iraqi army. ``It's one of the best facilities the Iraqi army has ever seen. There's running water, a sewage system, training rooms, motor pool facilities.''
A reporter from the Reuters news service accompanied Miles to see the camp. ``I told him, `Isn't it exciting to know we're helping the Iraqi army, to know that two brigades of the Iraqi army will be living in these barracks?' ''
He remembers walking past a classroom filled with about a dozen Iraqi soldiers. ``They were learning how to remove minefields, how to build checkpoints, and I thought to myself, `We might just be getting this right.' ''
Asked what he'd like to say to his country, Miles said: ``I'm proud that Americans have always been behind their soldiers. I would ask that they also be behind the cause of what we're doing here. I ask that they continue to believe in the mission and that we will be successful and not to give up. We must be successful in Iraq. I never want to explain to my children again why airplanes are flying into buildings.''
The mission's hardest part was leaving his family. ``You know you're never going to get that year back.'' And he resents that terrorism has changed our routines. At the airport, his family ``couldn't go all the way to the gate to say goodbye.'' He felt denied ``that last minute.''
He wants to make things better for his kids.
After five weeks in Baghdad, he's proud of the progress he's seeing.
You might argue that the AP, which has between 70 and 80 people in Iraq, most on television crews, should embed more war correspondents with military units to get the good news, but it already does.
At the same time, newspapers and wire services stake their reputations on delivering independent reports that offer unfiltered perspective and context. They wouldn't dream of trumpeting government numbers without independent verification, which can be hard to do when you cannot safely travel the roads.
History gives the media reason to be skeptical.
A recent example underscores the need to be wary of the numbers.
The Government Accountability Office reported in March that ``U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped.''
Iraqi troop strength is a critical measure of the war's progress. President Bush called it key to drawing down American troops. The Defense Department should be embarrassed for lacking credibility in assessing that number. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should demand accuracy - and create transparency - on this all-important measure. Public confidence is riding on it.
At the same time, the American media should continue to innovate ways to cover the measures of progress in Iraq, including through the photo report, which especially stays focused on the dramatic. The bright minds I know who run today's news reports are capable of creating strategic ways to cover key story lines there. I'm convinced of it.
Without overarching story lines, wire editors may, like the media in general, focus instead on the day's most dramatic news. We do it all the time in our own communities, unfortunately. An incident in Ybor City is more likely to get covered than the good news happening in a school. It's a challenge editors recognize and work on.
Yet loss of life cannot be ignored.
In reporting this piece, I discovered that many of the ``good news'' snippets I receive every month have been reported by the AP.
It's also clear that an exaggerated focus on upbeat facts fails to accurately portray the complex, dangerous and sometimes celebratory portrait of Iraq today.
``We've seen those lists of facts and statistics about progress in Iraq, and they are true. In fact, we've reported most or all of them. Schools have been built. More phones are working,'' says Mike Silverman, the AP's managing editor.
``But that doesn't begin to tell the whole story. We've tried hard to go beyond the numbers and write stories that put a human face on life in Iraq today. But many of them, like the recent tale of a young couple caught in a suicide attack as they returned from their wedding, are not good-news stories.''
Consumer demand for stories of progress speaks to America's need for mile markers on the road to ending this war and getting our military men and women safely home.
``The natural American tendency is to think that we are going to complete the mission in Iraq, then we can pull out,'' said Kathy Tulumello, deputy managing editor of The Arizona Republic in Phoenix.
``The American tendency is to be optimistic, that every day going forward is one less day we're going to be there.''
= Danger
LB: GOOD NEWS FROM IRAQ Media Consumers Demand Broader Coverage Despite The Danger
