Shaun Kenney | Politics and Religion in Virginia's Public Square


Friday, June 16, 2006 TCS Daily: Live Bait: Grunt with a Camera Eye This is just an absolutely fascinating account on the ground in Iraq. Here's a snip: The daily successes. The Marines would joke about this. Their MOS [military operation specialty] was in 0311 or 0352 is 0350 as in infantry police officer. You gather Intel. You set up ambush and bait-and-kill operations. You track down a bad guy when they were bringing in a bad guy every other day. Finding a weapons cache every other day in the area... But those weren't the things making the headlines. Capturing a wanted, low-level terrorist in Amiriya is a big success in that area. Would there ever be a story on it? No. One reason is there wasn't a reporter there when the individual was captured. Even though there was a compelling story in how they gathered the Intel, tracked the person, conducted a raid on the suspect's home, captured them, etc. A big success not covered in the media. What is covered is a car bombing in Baghdad. What happens on aggregate is you get a distorted view of the war that shows only car bombings and few successes, when there are successes every day -- little successes that add up. If it bleeds, it leads. Right? There's another comment in this interview concerning the number of journalists in Iraq compared to the number of journalists reporting on the Michael Jackson case. You can only guess at which one had more journalists, but the proportion of the numbers will stun you. Case in point: I get a call (about a month or two ago) from a TV news director who had known what I had done in Iraq. He was hoping I was still there so he could hire me to go out and do what I had done in the past because there was a reserve unit from their area being deployed. But the parent affiliate said: "nope, we don't leave the Fortified Hotel -- ever." So a lot of the employers aren't willing to bear the risk. And that is the structural program that really tilts the war. Also, and this is probably the most disturbing part, many journalists have not figured out that they're being targeted by the enemy on purpose to help shape the coverage of the war. The insurgents don't want the reporters out and about running around. They're completely satisfied with the "balcony" report and some video shot by a stringer of the daily car bomb. That's the message that the insurgents want to get out. They don't realize that warfare is both the kinetic and non-kinetic. And, therefore, they miss how they're being played by the insurgents. I wish more reporters realized that. Fascinating article on the way the media is covering the situation in Iraq, and it goes a long way in dismissing the myth that we are "losing" the reconstruction of a nation ravaged by the most brutal dictatorship of our time. (kudos to McQ over at QandO for the article) posted by Shaun Kenney \| 6/16/2006 11:38:00 AM \| 0 comments 0 Comments: Post a Comment Home
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