BEIRUT -- I was about to write a scathing retort to Airedale's slag on Ellen Knickmeyer when I something more important happened: Today, CBS cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan were killed, and the correspondent, Kimberly Dozier, was critically injured when the convoy they were embedded with was hit by an IED. This brings the total journalists killed in Iraq to 71 with an additional 26 media workers (translators, drivers, etc.) also dead. My sympathies go out to all of their families.
Airedale's comment, reprinted below, should be see in this light. My response is below his comment.
Chris, on a side note, this reporter Ellen Knickmeyer
has filed a story from Baghdad ( green zone ) about an investigation into a possible incident of excessive force atrocity of marines and Iraqi soldiers ( Shia ? ) in a convoy through sunni dominated Haditha.What I read was that a video tape 'happened' to catch the explosion of an IED and the following mi lai ......
Do you know this "Ellen Knickmeyer" who files reports about Haditha eye witness accounts from a Baghdad office?
The story that Airedale is referring to is here.
First of all, let's clear something up. ALMOST NO REPORTERS LIVE IN THE GREEN ZONE. I really don't know why this has to be repeated so often. The U.S. military does not allow us to live there. The Washington Post house, where Ellen lives, is right next to the TIME Magazine house, where I lived. We most certainly do NOT live in the Green Zone, and we go through the ups and downs -- well, mostly downs -- of living in Baghdad like other Iraqis. We have almost constant contact with Iraqis through out staff and their families.
And most of us don't want to live in the Green Zone. It's boring. It's almost impossible for our Iraqi staff to get in and out. And when they do, they open themselves up to retaliation from insurgents and terrorists who see anyone using a GZ entrance as a collaborator. It's hella dangerous.
And, yes, I know Ellen well. We worked together briefly back in 1997 when I was new to the Associated Press and she was an old hand on the International desk.
But that's not important. What's important is the way reporters work in Baghdad these days. More on that later. But also important is Airedale's blatant misreading of the story. The video didn't "happen" to catch an IED and the massacre that followed. The story makes no mention of that, either, so Airedale didn't read any such thing. Secondly, TIME Magazine broke this story back in February. I know the guys who brought in the video and I've seen it. It's grim. It's a recording of bodies, bloodstains, bullet holes and shell casings. It's obvious from the video that this was a massacre and not a firefight.
I'm not going to go into too much, for security and competitive reasons, but TIME Magazine reporters -- not Iraqi stringers -- interviewed survivors of the massacre in a safe place in Baghdad after bringing them down from Haditha. I'm not sure how Ellen did it, but my read is that she did something similar, or used one of her Iraqi staffers to interview survivors in Haditha.
Oh, wait! That's exactly how she did it: "The 24 Iraqi civilians killed on Nov. 19 included children and the women who were trying to shield them, witnesses told a Washington Post special correspondent in Haditha this week and U.S. investigators said in Washington."
In another paragraph, she writes: "Townspeople led a Washington Post reporter this week to the girl they identified as Safa. Wearing a ponytail and tracksuit, the girl said her mother died trying to gather the girls. The girl burst into tears after a few words. The older couple caring for her apologized and asked the reporter to leave."
Hm. Sure sounds like a Washington Post reporter, possibly Ellen, did some shoe-leather work there.
But, look: This is how it's done these days; we rely on stringers and Iraqi staffers who can go where Westerners can't. It's not perfect, but it works better than you think. Our Iraqi staffers are getting better and better: more professional, more discerning, more skeptical. I have utter faith in the Iraqi TIME staffer who brought this story to us, and I'm sure Ellen has the same confidence. Since I know Ellen and I know her to be a good journalist, I'm going to say I'm pretty sure she knows what she's doing.
This accusation that reporters don't go out has been dogging the press corps in Baghdad since things got bad, and it's almost wholly undeserved. Why the hate, brother? Other than the obvious and clumsy White House attack on the media to discredit all news coming out of Iraq as "biased," I also think it's because the Washington press corps was so phenomenally bad in the lead-up to the war that people think we're all the same people. We're not. I don't know any Baghdad reporters who were also in the Washington corps before the war. Except for maybe some TV and magazine parachute journalists.
But the fault, dear brutes, lies not just in ourselves, but in the stars of the blogosphere, sites like Daily Kos and Instapundit. Blog culture has created such a distrust of all so-called Mainstream Media that it's almost heretical to defend "the press" in a blog these days. Well, fire up the coals and burn me at the stake then: I think the journalism coming out of Baghdad has been some of the best the international press corps has produced. Under tremendous difficulties, we have produced some great journalism -- like TIME's Haditha scoop, for instance. No other enemy has been so covered as the Iraqi insurgency; hell, the press in Baghdad understood there was an insurgency before the U.S. military did!
Our military coverage has been, in a word, great. Tom Lasseter's coverage from embeds has been some of the most hard-hitting of the war. He has been ahead of the curve on the sectarianism fury within and between the various security forces -- and he did all that reporting while embedded.
We had one major misstep: Abu Ghraib. I'll cop to that (not personally, of course.) Reporters had been hearing that stuff for weeks and months beforehand, but we just couldn't believe that Americans were piling naked guys into piles and putting glowsticks up their asses. It just seemed too outrageous. And every reporter in Baghdad has had the experience of hearing an Iraqi blame the "Israeli missile" for what was obviously a suicide bomb. Iraqis do have a tendency to exaggerate.
But we learned after our lesson; we stopped dismissing seemingly wild Iraqi claims out of hand, earning us unending scorn from the right which thinks the press corps is populated by raging lefties who think the U.S. military is a bunch of baby-killers. It’s not. I think most of us thought, initially, that an all-volunteer military with Vietnam behind it would have learned some lessons from My Lai, etc. about the abuse of power. We were all shocked by Abu Ghraib. We're not shocked now.
Which brings us back to Haditha. I'm incredibly proud to be associated with an outlet that broke this story and which got an investigation going into this. The evidence I saw on that videotape was overwhelming against the Marines involved. Men are going to go to jail for a long time over this, inshallah.
And we did it using the exact same frustrating, imperfect and flawed reporting methods Ellen used. And we were right, dammit. And so is Ellen. To criticize her for her using Iraqi staffers to go where she can't is to criticize and doubt all of the reporting that comes out of Iraq these days. Lord knows the Bushies would like you to lose all faith in the media so they can claim all the bad (but true) news is a giant conspiracy by east coast liberal elites out to undermine the troops. You're perfectly free to believe that. But you won't be getting the story of America's misadventure in Mesopotamia.
Two more men are dead and a woman critically injured for that story. You may not like the stories coming out of the theatre of battle. Well, I don't like what the Marines did in Haditha. If you want me to "support the troops," whatever that means these days, how about a little support for the press corps?
Great post Christopher. As a Viet Nam vet it sickens me to see the spin come round again, and again the first casualty is truth. On this Memorial day I honor not only the fallen troops of the military, but also the reporters and staff that bravely attempt to keep truth afloat.
I recognize that the war correspondents, as much as any soldier in any war, have been critical to the maintenance of our freedom, Christopher. As I’ve been privy to their work since the earliest days of Vietnam, my respect and gratitude is huge.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Sites last summer, and know firsthand his feelings towards the troops he’s worked with through the years. Even though he was accused of all kinds of lousy motives by the hawk bloggers.
It’s unfortunate that grandstanders like Geraldo - who used to be a solid reporter in his own right - and some folks embedded in the cause of the denizens of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, have helped foster the impression that all journalists are uncritical or corrupted. Certainly, bloggers, both left and right have contributed to this, just as party partisans have done for many decades before blogs even existed.
It must be dispiriting to feel lumped in simply because some journalists haven’t been up to snuff, or because of partisan skepticism. But it’s been pretty obvious to anyone who’s followed your efforts since before this war began that your work’s been well beyond any negative critique.
I know the difference between tabloidism, the writers of puffpieces, partisan hackery and serious journalism. The costs the latter have experienced in this war have been staggering, and my Memorial Day tributes are as much for them as they are for our troops and the innocents of Iraq.
This democracy we enjoy could not exist without the vivid truths of many journalists. Those who take on the dangers in war or stand up to counter the powerful are amazingly courageous folks.
Thank you, for being among that group and your ongoing work. And especially, stay safe.
Whenever secondary sources are used, whether they’re staffers, runners, or whoever, readers have to be critical; the journalist wasn’t there to see what happened, that immediately should put up a caution flag. Especially since readers normally aren’t privy to how much vetting that particular journalist puts his/her sources through. Unless detailed otherwise, I’m always concerned that in their desire for a story reporters are happy enough in Iraq to go with “speaks English and is willing to work with me” as good enough qualifications, instead of exploring the source’s background and thinking long and hard about whether the source has other motives than telling the truth for wanting to work for the journalist.
Too much to ask for? If a reporter is willing to let someone else be their eyes and ears, that’s the minimum readers should be expecting to be done. “Conditions are tough” isn’t a good enough excuse, nor is “trust us, we’re very good, really!” very reassuring, either.
“…have helped foster the impression that all journalists are uncritical or corrupted.”
Yep, from where I sit, safe and knowing that the press are really not all that brave and really don’t get paid enought to get killed or maimed, it sometimes sounds like it.
But..I’m an adult and I’m smart enough like most ignorant Americans to know that there are great, good and poor journalists.
It’s just sometimes hard to tell when you know that you can’t depend on getting first hand reporting and information.
It’s amazing and sad that the three Michaels are freelance journalists, and give out only first hand information after being crafted and brightened by their minds and their talents.
We are also smart enough (while some in the media seem not to be) to know that there are Marines and Soldiers that are great, good and poor warriors.
But, you really should read what VDH has to say about reporting and how World War II would have sounded without the censorship and with the bias of the modern media.
Erie would have been ashamed to know some of the “journalists” of today and he would be sad and ashamed of the crimes of some of our warriors, as he was of those of his wars.
But, he would have understood both and wrote about it and tried his best to help everyone else understand all of it.
Papa Ray West Texas USA
Chris,
I largely agree with you. But the meme of the “imprisoned journalist” didn’t come out of nowhere, or even out of the blogosphere. It came out of, among other things, Farnaz Fassihi’s infamous email, the general gist of which has been backed up many times, just for example, in the NY Review of Books piece by Orville Schell. So who’s right? Can we reconcile your defense and the Schell critique?
Schell and Fassihi never said we couldn’t do our jobs. In fact, I was just talking with Farnaz recently and she told me that there were very few stories she couldn’t do because of the security situation. We just had to find creative ways to do them — one of them is relying more on stringers and local staffers. This is actually a really common arrangement. Writers at TIME Magazine almost always rely on reporters in the field to file the raw reportage and then write the story from that, in close consultation with the stringers. We simply moved down the chain a little bit on that. And that’s what most reporters are doing now, acting as filterers and editors to the stringers. In the case of Knight Ridder, they’re even letting the Iraqis write their own stories if their English and writing skills are up to snuff. This is an age-old practice.
Before the war on the media began, audiences routinely thought that reporters in the field would be their eyes and ears. Now the reporters are having to take a single step back and rely on others because there’s a good chance we’d be killed, and suddenly we’re all incompetent? Or corrupted or something?
I like Farnaz; she’s a good friend of mine, but she would never say we weren’t able to do our jobs. And I don’t think Schell was saying that either. There’s really nothing to reconcile.
Back very early in the time I was reading your blog, I expressed some concerns about some of the reporting from Iraq I was reading, but also complemented the work coming out of our local San Francisco Chronicle which has sent reporters including Anna Badhken at times. To my astonishment, I later got a call from a Chronicle guy thanking me for saying something appreciative of their work. Wow — I had no idea how underappreciated they felt.
You guys are our eyes and ears. You won’t be perfect, but we wouldn’t know anything without your taking the risks to get the news (that “you” includes the Iraqis brave or desparate enough to work with US media.)
The corruption of the news comes on this side of the water as it gets run through our very agitated political wringer.
But, you really should read what VDH has to say about reporting and how World War II would have sounded without the censorship and with the bias of the modern media.
This would be the same VDH moron, who after briefly touching down in Baghdad, made a statement saying that “the terrorists have succeeded in making all the daily mayhem of a major city appear to be political violence”, along with a host of statements nearly as stupid. But that statement alone should have lead to half of the words medical scientists examing him to see how someone could reach middle age without processing a brain (the other half would have been examining any reader who believed that).
Of course, as anyone not being examined by those scientists knows, the violence in iraq is not the mayhem of a daily city, because even in the most chaotic third world city, IEDs, car bombs, suicide bombers, rival militia attacks, summary executions etc. are not considered “normal apolitical mayhem”>
There’s an utter lack of respect, it seems, shown towards the stringers: these are people who realise that a byline can get them killed. It’s precisely the same patronising attitude that Bush uses as a strawman attack.
It’s inescapable, though, that the access available to Western reporters is itself part of the story. I’ve long wanted the larger papers and newsmags to be more explicit in describing the role played by special correspondents. There are obvious security concerns, but for every kneejerker who doubts that an Iraqi can report on Iraq, there’ll be a larger number of readers who will gain even more respect for those getting reports to the bureaux.
Amen, Nick S. But you don’t have to look far for people who claim to support the noble Iraqis but then turn around and claim the Iraqi stringers are incompetent. Like Ralph Peters who libels iraqi stringers because they are after “blood money.”
Unconscionable.
The link to the msnbc page doesn’t work. As always, the spartan style and stark tone of your writing makes your reportage more than credible. The lack of hyperbole set against the excess of same on the part of the nay-sayers speaks volumes. Thanks once again for your point of view.
I’ll admit it… I’m one who generally doesn’t ‘trust’ the media, or at least not as a whole. I have a few favorites like SFGate or the NYTimes. Then there are a few sites I check frequently, like HuffPo, or Buzzflash. In addition, I must subscribe to fifty newsletters so I’m always picking headlines out of email. When I want to know what’s happening in Iraq… I come here. I read your blog, your published stuff and things you recommend.
I’m sure there’s some great stuff coming out of Iraq but we’re not getting a whole lot of ‘real reporting’ on the evening news. Back to Iraq and Baghdad Burning, that’s where I almost invariably believe what I’m reading. Far too much of what we get in the MSM is completely void of context. I don’t know if that’s a blogosphere thing or not, but it’s been my experience.
Peace… and thanks.
Chris,
Thanks for your reply. I hope its clear, I have absolutely no problems with the stringer set-up in Iraq. I mostly just wanted to point out that the “imprisioned journalist” narrative has come from places other than blogs. I know what you’re saying about this being a possible misinterpretation of Schell and Fassihi, but even so, that’s how they’re being interpreted by some quarters back here in the states.
I understand the meme, but here’s what Fassihi said to me about three weeks when I interviewed her for a project I’m working on:
C: we were just speaking about this before the interview, the good versus the bad news debate, and I want to wind you up on this one, I’m trying to anyway. Conservatives — and the media are being demonized on this, but is there any justification to this complaint? I mean how justified is this complaint that we’re focusing too much, taking a “if it bleeds it leads” mentality?
F: I don’t think it’s justified at all. it seems to me that is very aggressive and orchestrated campaign to criticize the western media in Iraq and make it sound like we have an axe to grind or we’re on some sort of agenda to make the Iraq war seem like failure, which I think is appalling and insulting, considering that we all there as journalists. We’re all there as independent observers of the conflict. We’re taking huge personal risks, we’re putting our families in great agony, anxiety to our families, because we believe in our mission. We believe it’s hugely important to have independent press there, and to not have to rely on the propaganda of the government, military, whether it is the Iraqi government or US government. And I think that we may not—the security situation may prevent us from getting a hundred percent feel of the place, but I think we have a better idea of what’s going on in Iraq than anybody else. I think we have a better idea of what’s going on with the Iraqi public than the US military, which is confined to the military bases, than the diplomats who are confined to the Green Zone, and certainly than the people sitting in Washington or New York looking at TV. (emphasis added)
Obviously this wasn’t a question on the imprisoned journalist idea, but her answer is telling, considering her email is being used to further the imprisoned meme.
You guys are working under some serious constraints and many of you have demonstrated real intitiative and tenacity in working around them. Chris, I have admired the detail and nuance in your reporting; it tells me that you have taken the trouble to learn and understand about Iraq and its people. Same-same with Ellen Knickmyer and Anthony Shadid when he was there. The American military and diplomats couldn’t do this kind of reporting; they are just too walled off from Iraqi society. As foreigners you face many of the same constraints but have been able to work around many of them.
And none of you have to do this, to put yourself in harm’s way. My experience with combat in Vietnam has lasted a lifetime. I hope that all of you will be able to deal with the aftermath of so much carnage and bloodshed.