How the Legacy Media Distorts the Facts in Iraq
Partisans of the mainstream press often pose this question to their critics: “What would you have us do? Should we not report the tragedies of war?”
But our objection to the media is not the bad news it purveys. God knows, there’s plenty of that to go around in any armed conflict. Our criticism, broadly, is this: the war itself has disappeared.
A war has history. It has geography. It has strategy and tactics. Personalities influence its course. Non-combatants are affected economically as the fortunes of war change. And violence, or the threat of violence, influences politics – the non-coerced relations of the affected groups.
A daily recitation of fatalities and terrorist threats misses all of this.
Here are ten generic deficiencies in how the networks and major print organizations cover Operation Iraqi Freedom.
1) Baselines M.I.A. (Missing in Action)
Every day one reads casualty counts from Iraq – 20 died in sporadic shootings, or 50 died in a market bombing, or 9 mutilated bodies were abandoned in a drainage ditch. And one is legitimately shocked. This kind of thing doesn’t happen where we live. It certainly doesn’t happen daily.
But the baseline for violence in Iraq has a history – one intricately documented by human rights organizations, and quite different from ours.
Under Saddam’s rule, civilian deaths from regime violence averaged 75 per day. If one factors in the 500,000 deaths that resulted from Saddam’s wars of aggression, the regime-generated body count hits 125 per day.
That’s the baseline which preceded Operation Iraqi Freedom. Since the bombing of the Askari Shrine in February of ’06, there has been a spike in civilian violence, which has claimed roughly 35 lives per day.
Much of the killing in contemporary Iraq is perpetrated by the same people who manned Saddam’s Makhabaret, or secret police. And a great deal of it is perpetrated by former victims of that violence, against their former tormentors.
The result is a country that is, in places (see below) extremely violent. Nonetheless, a lousy day under the coalition equals a routine day under the Ba’ath. Today, terrorists attack the Iraqi government. In Saddam’s day, they ran it.
The media’s coverage of Iraqi violence consistently ignores the baseline of pre-invasion violence, extablished under Saddam’s 25-year tyranny.
2) Trendlines M.I.A.
Nowhere is the mainstream press more susceptible to accusations of bias than in its treatment of “trendlines” in the war. It was a “trend” when American casualties increased in 2004. It was not a trend when they decreased in 2005 and 2006. It was a “trend” when Iraqi police and army fatalities increased in summer of 2005. It was not a trend when they decreased in 2006. It was a trend when attacks on infrastructure increased in 2005. It was no trend when they decreased in 2006.
3) Geography M.I.A.
The average American viewer of network news does not know, and could never guess, that 80% of all insurgent attacks are located in four of Iraq’s 18 governates, containing less than half of Iraq’s population. Twelve governates, containing more than half of the population, experience less than 6% of the attacks. In 10 provinces, there is no insurgency worth mentioning.
Wars are about territory. The “pacified” areas in Iraq are large and growing. This helps explain why a majority of Iraqis believe their personal security is good, and why a plurality consider it better now than under Saddam.
4) Operations M.I.A.
Everyday troops of the Coalition and the Iraqi Defense Forces conduct multiple operations, raiding bomb-making factories, confiscating insurgent arsenals, capturing or killing al-Qaeda gunmen, and rescuing kidnap victims. Ask any soldier or marine: These operations are as much a part of the war as the bombings in Baghdad. But they are rarely penetrate the nightly news.
What kind of “war coverage” ignores the military operations of one side?
5) Politics M.I.A.
An excuse often proferred in defense of the legacy media in Iraq is that coverage is limited by the danger in which westerners find themselves in the war zones – particularly in Baghdad and the “Sunni triangle.”
These dangers may indeed constrict a western newsman’s freedom of travel. But there’s nothing that prevents him from picking up his cell phone and dialing the headquarters of the major players in the Iraqi democracy. We read little about the political platforms of the SCIRI, or the Dawa, or the PDK, or the Islamic Party, or any of the major groups in the Iraqi legislature. We rarely see interviews of the ministers of the Iraqi government.
Now apart from the fact that the government of Iraq has been selected in democratic elections internationally monitored, that government also commands a fighting force of over 260,000 – ten times more than the insurgency can muster. To a large and growing degree, it is the IDF that is hunting and capturing insurgents, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq that is trying and convicting them, and the Iraqi populace itself that is informing on them.
But the representatives of the Iraqi democracy, readily accessible to a free Iraqi press corps, are virtually absent in American coverage of the war. Where are the interviews of al-Hakim, al-Jafaari, al-Maliki, al-Shahristani? By contrast, the second- and third-hand statements of insurgent leaders merit screaming headlines.
Can you cover the war of a nation while ignoring its politics?
6) Economics M.I.A.
There is a lot of economic news from Iraq, some good, some bad, but all neglected.
The major stories include:
- the explosion of private entrepreneurship;
- the proliferation of communications (print and electronic);
- the revival of Iraqi agriculture, decimated under Saddam;
- the crisis caused by the removal of large-scale government employment sinecures;
- the relative stabilization of the Iraqi dinar;
- the liberalization of Saddam-era restrictions on foreign investment; and
- the impact of domestic oil subsidies on domestic smuggling rings.
How much have you heard about any of this?
7) Normalcy M.I.A.
If there are no significant military operations in most of Iraq – if the insurgency is limited geographically – then a significant part of the story of Operation Iraqi Freedom is what people are doing with their new-found liberty. Anyone who surfs the Iraqi blogosphere knows that contemporary Iraq is crawling with new business and civic associations – with a revival of religious life in places where it had been surpressed – with a revival of planting in fields that had been abandoned.
There is a lot of feature news coming out of Iraq. But these are not its subjects.
“Good News” M.I.A.
Anyone who follows the mounds of statistics pouring out of the Iraqi ministries and the Multi-National Forces is struck by the systematic exclusion of good news. We pick the word “systematic” carefully, and this is what we mean: a topic which is treated as news when it affects the coalition adversely is ignored when it affects the coalition positively.
For instance: Iraqi oil is big news when pipelines are blown up, when production is low, and when exports decline. But Iraqi oil is not in the news when output increases, when exports increase, when additional infrastructure comes on-line, and when new fields are discovered – all of which has occurred quietly in the last three months.
Another example: electricity is news when there are blackouts in Baghdad. But it is not news that access to electricity outside of Baghdad has increased.
A prime example of good news ignored is the 10-fold growth in “actionable intelligence” – tips from Iraqi citizens to IDF or MNF forces leading to operations against insurgent cells. This crucial trend is reported in military press releases and in academic studies – but you’ll never hear it mentioned on the nightly news.
9) Independence M.I.A.
After the end of “major combat operations,” the networks decimated their corps of “embedded” reporters – the only newsmen with a first-hand view of what American troops were doing in the field. What was left is bunkered down in Baghdad, dependent on Iraqi stringers for reports on the latest insurgent bombing. And Iraqi stringers often depend on the terrorists themselves, or on al Jazeera, which has, uh, better connections with the terrorists.
This generation of news second-hand explains why so much of the “script” Americans see on the nightly news is written by al Qaeda – a fact confirmed by the terrorists’ internal correspondence, which emphasizes the importance of breaking America’s will through the media.
But its Baghdad base cannot explain the peculiar lethargy of the legacy media in Iraq. There is plenty they could do in the Iraqi capital which they do not do – coverage of the Iraqi parties, and legislative leaders; stories of the professional and civic associations – important stories involving little or no physical risk. The paucity of such coverage is a decision, not a necessity.
One is led to conclude that ideology, as much as danger, limits the scope of MSM coverage in Iraq.
10) Balance M.I.A.
In a sense, this topic summarizes the other nine. America’s war news – particularly our broadcast news – is a daily recitation of insurgent operations and casualty statistics. Americans can be forgiven for regarding this war as an unrelieved obituary column, because that is how it is reported. Vanished are strategy and tactics. Geography is absent, as are tales of daily life. There are no coalition operations, and no Iraqi heroes.
Absent are the aspirations of two nations struggling to understand and enjoy the blessings of liberty.
And one is left to wonder: what kind of moral clods could have missed this story?