All Blog Posts from Public Eye

The reports from Iraq and Afghanistan come to us stateside with a troubling monotony of body counts and acronyms, like “IED,” that we’d rather not know.

It’s difficult to report over there, and it’s also extremely difficult to find “good news” stories that can compete with the harrowing tales for news merit.

But who knew the military was actually making the search for “good news” more difficult?

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Glass half full? Or glass half empty?

Last week I wondered which way the media narrative was going to head, when I saw – in the same day or two mind you – the New Republic note that things in Iraq were possibly turning around, that they weren’t “unrelentingly ghastly” right before I saw another story saying that 2007 had become the deadliest year for American forces in Iraq.

Given the fact that it contained a hard statistic, the bad news story seemed to grab more attention – at least according to this writer’s observations. The ‘Progress in Iraq’ story is far murkier and relies on some observational evidence and an anecdote here or there, so I wasn’t all that surprised.

Former USA Today writer Richard Benedetto did a similar – definitely more concrete – exercise when he came across another story a little while ago, the story that September 2007 had seen the fewest deaths in Iraq since March of 2006.

He shared his observations in The Politico:

None of the top newspapers played it on their Oct. 31 front page, the day after the reports were released.

Many, including The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and USA Today, played it well inside the paper. But some, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times, didn’t mention it at all, instead trumpeting bad news from Iraq.

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In its neverending quest to confound those who deem it the news equivalent of “dessert,” “The Daily Show” has done it again – they’ve sent a correspondent to Baghdad. According to today’s Hollywood Reporter:

Correspondent Rob Riggle, who has combat experience as a major in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, spent five days in Iraq last week with "Daily Show" writer Kevin Bleyer and field producer Glenn Clements. They went with a USO sketch comedy tour known as "Operation Feel the Heat" -- armed with small, handheld cameras -- and also brought back video that will be used for "Daily Show" about the troops and their lives in Iraq.

Although "Daily Show" spends time on topics related to Iraq and often has one of its correspondents appear against a greenscreen that simulates the Middle Eastern country, it's the first time the show has gone the extra step and visited Iraq.

It’s a credit to Riggle and Jon Stewart that they would come in to entertain the troops at the same time the Iraqi parliament has broken out of town to avoid the August heat.

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Two weeks ago we discussed former Marine and present-day author Josh Rushing, whose career path has taken him from press liaison in Iraq -- where he was featured in the documentary "Control Room" -- to correspondent for Al Jazeera’s English-language network. Today we continue with the second installment of Public Eye's conversation with him, where we talked about American media, Pat Tillman, Jon Stewart and how, when you really think about it, Qatar is a little like Delaware.

Matthew Felling: Have you been following the Pat Tillman story? What do you make of it, from a media standpoint as well as as a former Marine?

Josh Rushing: I’m actually fortunate enough to be invited back to the senior leadership of the military’s public affairs frequently. I bring up the story. I have some coverage that we did of the Senate hearing where Pat Tillman’s brother and Jessica Lynch testified. I show them that story to show them the effect, what happens when you lie. The truth always gets out; institutionally the military knows that. At the Defense Information School, where they train all their media liaison officers, the number one thing they teach them is “Maximum Information, Minimum Delay.” They’re there to do Public Affairs, not public relations. And the difference is, public affairs is meant to assist the media and get the information out because the American public has a right to know. As taxpayers, they have a right to know what’s going on within the ranks. And that’s what a public affairs officer does. He doesn’t spin or sell the message. He’s not PR; he’s not looking for good publicity. That’s not what his job is supposed to be.

So institutionally, they’re teaching the right thing. But the problem is your public affairs officer is generally the junior officer on the staff, and he doesn’t have a lot of sway. It’s the senior officers that get to make the final decision, and that’s what happened in the Pat Tillman case. It was just a bald-faced lie.

And it’s not just a little cover-up. They wrote him up for a silver star. That requires witnesses and an investigation. It’s a big deal and they awarded it to him. Which means this is beyond a small cover-up – it’s a huge fabrication.

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Jessica Biel.

Samuel L. Jackson.

Put them in a movie – then add Christina Ricci, TV hunk Chad Michael Murray and rapper 50 Cent – and you’d think you had a solid chance at a decent box office showing.

Not necessarily.

The movie, “Home of the Brave” – about Iraq war veterans returning and getting acclimated back into day-to-day life – was one of the biggest flops in recent Hollywood. According to the Internet Movie Database, it grossed $44,000 – most likely less than the cars that Jackson or Biel drive. (To provide proportion, a movie like “The Hills Have Eyes 2” grossed $20 million.)

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We're more than four years into the war, and the media may now be digging deeper into the brutal realities of Iraq than they ever have before. In recent weeks, reporters have been questioning whether Al Qaeda in Iraq is related to the Al Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11, as the president has implied. (The answer: Not really. Al Qaeda was not operational inside Iraq in 2001.) The media have also begun looking into the assistance that Iran is providing the Mahdi Army in Bahgdad as they fight American troops. And reporters have become more confrontational in presidential press conferences, with even Fox News folks starting to sound like Helen Thomas.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times took it to another level, asking: Who Are We Fighting? According to the blockbuster expose, very often it's an ally.

Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said …

The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key ally that at best has not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

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Everybody has an idea of “How to Fix Nightly Network News.” Go younger! No, wait, go older! Do more Paris Hilton! Show more Wayward Whales! Show Some Leg! But today – like those whales in that story from a month ago – J. Max Robins of Broadcasting and Cable swims upstream and tells the newscasts his secret:

More war.

That’s right. More war. In a world where fluff, cotton candy, and pop culture are bleeding into most newscasts, Robins has decided that hard news – not to mention, harder to watch news – is the next big thing in niche broadcasting. And he suggests that more coverage, and more graphic coverage, is both responsible journalism and a value-added component of a nightly news broadcast:

My suggestion to all in the nightly-news game, even leader World News, is that they get a lot more aggressive in their coverage of the Iraq War and related stories. I’d advise them to provide even more graphic coverage of what’s actually going on in Iraq and to never shy away from the gruesome toll the war is taking.

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In recent years, we’ve seen the relationship between the military and journalists get rather … adversarial. Some might even call an investigative reporter who becomes a soldier in Iraq and then returns to the newsroom after his tour of duty confused, if not schizo.

Carl Prine of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review prefers the word patriotic.

In the days after 9/11, Prine gained lot of attention and respect when he investigated the security status of chemical plants in Chicago, Houston and Pittsburgh – and found them very vulnerable. He remained committed to the security beat over the years until 2005, when the former Marine decided to re-enlist in the National Guard, take what he had learned about security issues, and apply them in Iraq.

In a conversation with Public Eye, Prine indicated putting back on the uniform was a simple decision. “The military called me and said they were having trouble reaching their recruitment goals. I felt I had to do my duty, so I joined up with the 1st Battalion of the 110th Infantry of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, a unit that hadn’t seen combat since the Battle of the Bulge – and was sent over to Iraq."

Prine is one of a number of journalists out there who can talk of Iraq with the voice of a veteran, but the eye of a reporter. He talked about his fellow soldiers who complained about media coverage. “My unit was stationed between Ramadi and Fallujah – a very rough place. The war was going badly. I’d been blown up four times. And some of the soldiers would ask ‘Why are the reporters all doom and gloom?’ I’d have to tell them ‘If the reporters were here and saw what we go through, there’s not much good here.’

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Questions about the war in Iraq continue to divide America. What’s going on, exactly? Is there good news that we aren't getting? Why can’t we make even an educated guess about the effectiveness of the “surge?”

The bad news continues to come unabated -- last week’s headlines blared about May being the deadliest month in years – and the fog of war endures, despite our efforts to make sense of what's happening on the ground. At last night’s Republican presidential debate, Rudy Giuliani made this point about the surge:

And I'd just like to ask, I'd just like to ask one question I didn't get to ask before, when you said, if General Petraeus comes back in September and reports that things aren't going well, what are we going to do?

But suppose General Petraeus comes back in September and reports that things are going pretty well. Are we going to report that with the same amount of attention that we would report the negative news?

Giuliani’s media criticism occurred on the same day that the Associated Press held a panel discussion about Iraq in which AP Iraq Bureau Chief Steven R. Hurst said this:

It’s hard to give a very positive report of what’s going on in Baghdad right now for a number of reasons. I think, first and foremost, the United States puts a great deal of hope that the so-called troop surge would start having an effect. Immediately after it was announced, there was a significant drop in violence, in February and March, but that lasted a very short time. Now, we’ve seen a number of people being killed there, which is sadly the Baghdad story right now.

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In his Memorial Day column, David Carr of the New York Times spotlights paragraph 11(a) of IAW Change 3, Department of Defense Directive 5122.5. That may sound dry, but stick with me – isn't all the most interesting stuff buried in the paragraph 11(a)s of the world? Here's the graf in question, part of military embedding rules that went into effect last year:

Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without the service member’s prior written consent.

That may not seem too big an issue at first, but imagine how it plays out in practice – or, better yet, let veteran Iraq photographer Ashley Gilbertson tell you. “They are basically asking me to stand in front of a unit before I go out with them and say that in the event that they are wounded, I would like their consent," Gilbertson told Carr. “We are already viewed by some as bloodsucking vultures, and making that kind of announcement would make you an immediate bad luck charm.”

The military's argument is that it is only trying to protect the families of the soldiers – after all, would you like to open the pages of your local paper to see a picture of your wounded son on the battlefield? (Identifiable photos of dead American soldiers, incidentally, are prohibited altogether.) But journalists argue that the notion of protecting the families is a convenient excuse for the American military to suppress the reality of the war.

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