Attacking the Messenger: Military versus the Press

[pmbryant]

In the San Antonio Express-News:

Attacking the messenger
Web Posted: 08/29/2004 12:00 AM CDT

Sig Christenson
Express-News Military Writer

CAMP AS SALIYAH, Qatar — A familiar Iraqi street scene plays out on a flat-screen TV in the office of the U.S. Central Command's No. 2 man here.

Shot from an RQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, the image captures Iraqis in traditional Arab dress walking onto a street in Mosul near a set of earthtone homes.

"You're looking at a city that didn't look very much different than any community in the United States," said Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy chief of the U.S. Central Command. "Traffic all over the place, people all over the streets, commerce going on, and they don't have mortars going off and IEDs (improvised explosive devices) blowing up and all that stuff all the time."

That's the Iraq he thinks many Americans never see or read about. It's an argument as old as the U.S.-led occupation and tends to be made by some in the military and supporters of President Bush. Once a whisper, the claim is now a roar. "You're not telling the good news stories," they say.

I once was amused by that refrain. Too many Americans don't know about life in Iraq, in part because they get most of their news from television, whose 90-second stories are driven more by sound bites than journalism.

Now I'm worried. It's convenient for the Bush administration and its supporters to make journalists the object of scorn for flawed policies and an obvious failure to do their homework. It is especially convenient to do so in an election year.

(snip)

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