Some Questions to Start
Hello to all, and I am grateful, as we mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for the participation of our outside commentators – Joe Galloway, Jay Rosen, Paul Rieckhoff, Spencer Ackerman and Bob Bateman -- and any feedback from readers. Given the quality of the guest experts, I will just sketch out the issues we may cover this week and then get out the way until we start hearing from them, and from you.
My book, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits – and the President – Failed on Iraq, is probably the first to explore the history of the war for a five-year period, month to month, from the “run up” to the debate over the “surge” last autumn. It’s all there: from Wolfowitz to Petraeus, from Coulter to Colbert.
But the scandal, and tragedy, surrounding the misreporting of Iraqi WMDs has been covered so often and so well, in articles, blog posts and many books, that we will focus on the media coverage following the attack on Iraq and the nearly five years of war (or if you prefer, occupation) since.
We will discuss the WMD aspect to the war only in the context of major media outlets taking -- or refusing to take -- full responsibility for their errors in judgment and reporting in the pre-war period. For example, while it’s often said that The New York Times and The Washington Post “apologized” for their coverage, they did no such thing. We will get to that.
Major reviews of Bush administration's failures in the war are starting to appear this week (see Michael Gordon on the disbanding of the Iraqi army in today’s New York Times, for example) but have we seen much in the way of an honest review of media performance so far in the fifth anniversary coverage? As I write this, I haven’t seen any.
But enough of that. My overall critique in the book is that reporting on the war from Iraq and from Washington improved markedly after Saddam fell, while the pundits and editorial writers back in U.S. – some of whom were skeptical about the rush to war – became calcified in their view that conditions would soon improve, and we should not change course. This continued for, oh, four years or longer. Everyone knows about the “Friedman Unit” equaling give-them-another-six months but that was a view shared by most opinion makers until very recently. This is odd, since public opinion, for years now, has shifted in favor of beginning some kind of phased withdrawal.
I have a long list of subjects to try to cover this week — from coverage of soldier suicides to the pros and cons of the “embed” system. But let me open by putting to our guest commentators these two very topical questions:
# How do you judge coverage of the “surge” results in the past year? The overall portrayal of Gen. Petraeus?
# What do you make of the recent decline in any sort of coverage from Iraq? If the surge has really quieted violence that much, why not more coverage with journalists able to get out more?
Well, that should be enough to get everyone started! Fire away, folks.
I'm happy to see that you haven't included any "outside commentators" from Iraq or elsewhere in the world. Iraqis in particular have not taken advantage of the democracy that the US has brought them and should not be asked to comment on the situation in Iraq, particularly the recent surge. And foreigners in general can't be trusted.
American Exceptionalism has fueled US aggression, not only in Iraq but also recently elsewhere in Asia and Africa. AE means not only that the US can do anything it wants anywhere in the world, but also that the reportage of those events to Americans must be confined to US observers. Just to frost the cake, we will now ask the US observors to provide reportage on the reportage, if you follow. This has us all running around in ever-tightening circles and wondering why we're not getting anywhere, which apparently is the purpose.
March 17, 2008 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Greg:
Thanks for coming to TPM Cafe. Three questions for you:
1) Has the reduction in the number of foreign correspondents, fueled by the contraction of newsrooms and the consolidation of the newspaper business, altered the tenor and type of coverage we see emanating from Iraq, or would twice as many reporters simply produce twice as many of the same kinds of stories?
2) You posit a disconnect between journalistic opinion and public opinion on the path forward in Iraq. What does it mean to suggests, as you seem to do, that pundits and editorial writers whose professional lives are devoted to understanding the war are less likely to reach the conclusions that you want them to voice than are members of the public who have, at best, limited information available? If they're wrong, how have they gone wrong? And if they're right, why can't they convince the rest of us of that?
3) And a question about your day job. Is Joe Strupp still working on updating his list of Pulitzer finalists, or do we all have to wait until April to get the rest of the names?
March 17, 2008 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Getting to your final question first, because it is easiest, yes, Strupp is still working on it but afte 6 years of getting most of the finalists early on the new "secrecy" campaign has made it much tougher. He has a bunch of finalists that are likely for real but only single-sourced. I will consider your other queries when I have a moment...
March 17, 2008 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
"So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits – and the President – Failed on Iraq"
They didn't fail. They all succeeded by the only criterion they care about: making money.
Saddest by far is the failure of Congress and the US public.
March 17, 2008 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm assuming you didn't get an approving blurb on the dust jacket from Brookings Institute? :-)
Looks like the NYT needed 10 or more authors on the Iraqi mess, not just what AEI and Brookings thinks.
March 17, 2008 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, not a blurb from anyone at Brookings, although my daughter used to work there. I'm afraid some there might not like this book.
March 17, 2008 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome. I assume your questions are for us too.
1) The portrayal of Petraeus in the media has been an embarassment. Joe Klein at Time has a man-crush on the general. When Move On came out with its "Betray us" ad the media attacked Move On as if it's somehow wrong for civilian groups to criticize military leaders at all. The media fed us images of Petraeus the hero, the guy who would turn it all around. The media tried to convince the country that if we just put him in charge and gave him more resources, we'd be withdrawing by now. But we're still in it and the temporary surge now seems permanent.
2) We're getting less from Iraq because the election is the story right now. We're also getting less coverage of Bush. Bush is a lame duck and Iraq is last year's story.
March 17, 2008 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
One of the earliest chapters in the book conerns Rick Atkinson of The Washington Post and his coverage of then little-known Petraeus back in early 2004. Petraeus had a famous quote then about Iraq: "Tell me how this turns out." Could ask it again, today.
I also have a chapter on his link to the controverial suicide of Col. Ted Westhusing. Still not sure what to make of it.
March 17, 2008 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
And very little coverage back here at home on the Winter Soldier hearings.
March 17, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
In terms of your questions.
I think that the coverage of the surge has been positive, not because the surge has succeeded, but because people so desperately want to believe. No one likes defeat. No one wants to admit defeat. The American media, in particular, does not want to invest in a negative narrative. And the Republicans, the pundits, the other forces who have tied their fate to the war, are unwilling to embrace a negative narrative. They were drowning. Along comes the surge, and they grasp it like straws.
The death of media coverage allows us to end matters on a high note. If you stop reporting while you are winning... well then, you won. No one wants to hear negative stories after they've been sold on victory.
As for the surge itself. The truth is that it is not so much a failure as a kind of blind surrender.
The Surge has:
1) Handed Baghdad over to and enabled Sadr's Shiites to ethnically cleanse Baghdad.
2) Handed Anbar over to American supported 'Awakening Councils' composed of unrepentant Baathists and Tribesmen who are killing off their former Jihadists allies/enemies.
Let's translate that into equivalent Vietnam terms. In which case, the surge has:
1) Handed Saigon over to and enabled the Khmer Rouge to ethnically cleanse Saigon.
2) Handed the northern provinces of South Vietnam to an American financed NVA to kill off the VC.
The reduction in violence that results from handing over major sections of your territory to your enemy in order for them to fulfill their agenda... that doesn't usually qualify as victory.
There's another word for it.
That other word still applies, even if you pay tribute to/finance your enemy.
That other word still applies, even if your enemy happily takes your money, and promises to kill other enemies of yours, or whoever he wants, but to think well of you... for the time being.
March 17, 2008 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
The book idenifies the worst moment for the media in the entire war -- after their failures in the runup -- to their silence on the "surge" before it was launched. I believe I was first to coin the phrase, "Surge Protectors."
March 17, 2008 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Surge Protector" that was you?
That was very good.
The media was generally somewhat skeptical immediately prior to the surge. The feeling was that things had gone to hell. A new sales job was greeted with timidity. Once burned, twice shy and all that.
But really, they were just begging to be sold.
March 17, 2008 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for being here. There seems to be so little emphasis on Iraq reporting now--and so much consensus among the punditry for months now that "the surge is working"--that I was surprised by a Canadian reporter's diary from Iraq that I read this morning. (MacKinnon, from the Globe and Mail) He reports that while violence is down from last year, there is also much less freedom of movement--for reporters, for Iraqis, and especially for women. He also suggests that there is resentment among Iraqis that the US has appropriated so much of Bagdad for its own use. The picture he paints is not pleasant; the reality there even after "the surge is working" is still nothing any American should be proud of. Why does the punditry still seem so invested in presenting this positive view of the surge and not the ongoing bleak reality of what the US did to this country?
March 17, 2008 2:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's a good piece today up at the main McClatchy site by Hannah Allam -- the former Baghdad reporter (who we put on the cover of E&P) -- on how the daily lives of people are still horrendous for the most part...
March 17, 2008 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen. Got to take up space since I can't just give you a five.
March 17, 2008 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
How do you judge coverage of the “surge” results in the past year? The overall portrayal of Gen. Petraeus?
The Press, as usual, took the easy road. The result of the surge is complicated -- it requires looking at what the surge originally was supposed to accomplish, determining exactly what was being measured, examining the reasons behind the decrease in violence (many of which had nothing to do with the surge, and began before the surge started), sorting through the levels of violence in non-surge locations, assessing the influence of the other regional players, measuring the political progress. And I'm sure a whole lot more.
The press always takes the easy road, because they have 30 second sound-bites (or stories on page A27, the print equivalent...) with which to explain it all.
Enter Gen. P. -- here's a guy who (the press pre-determined) was a man of his worth, who we could all count on to give us the real assessment of Iraq. Isn't it so much less work to allow the Gen. to give credence to the easy road explanation?
(The only complicating factor was an article -- LA Times? -- that stated Gen. P.'s assessment was being written by the White House...oh well, easily swept under the rug.)
March 17, 2008 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
He still could be McCain's Veep, right?
March 17, 2008 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
"But enough of that. My overall critique in the book is that reporting on the war from Iraq and from Washington improved markedly after Saddam fell, while the pundits and editorial writers back in U.S. – some of whom were skeptical about the rush to war – became calcified in their view that conditions would soon improve, and we should not change course. This continued for, oh, four years or longer." - Greg Mitchell
Saddly editorialists and pundits are sort of like commodities for media producers. Pick your pundit, pick your view point. Look no further than the NYT's relationship with Bill Kristol... it's akin to battered spouse syndrome.
However, Judith Miller was another editorialist or pundit who provided the administration with invaluable services.
Of course, when propoganda met facts, Judy was left holding the bag.
MSM is slowly committing suicide before our eyes as pressure from ownership to slant the news either in a pro-business or pro-republican fashion continues to degrade their ability to deliver news. Reporters are chosen for viewpoints, not objectivity.
I was astonished when not long after the whole Samantha Powers episode broke that the Canadian News broke the story down, pointed fingers at the culprits and didn't go out of their way to avoid the obvious facts and their imiplications.
It was shocking. I forgot what real tv reporting looked like.
MSM suck as a source of news.
I can tolerate the Jim Lehrer hour and Bill Moyer's Frontline, but the papers are as lifeless as their content.
March 17, 2008 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I got the book last week, opened up today. It's really remarkable. One forgets just how rigged this was.
Greg was on top of it, trying to keep reporters honest.
Buy the book.
March 17, 2008 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will do. The fact that Greg is so open, honest and engaging here at the book club convinces me that I need to read this book. Greg made another sale!
March 18, 2008 8:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Greg, I'd welcome your comment on the media's acceptance of the Bush administration changing the name of the enemy from the "insurgents" to Al Qaede.
March 18, 2008 8:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
It has been along time since I heard a political speech like the one given by Barak Obama today.
I acknowledge the speech was prompted by and necessitated by the growing political turmoil in reaction to the publicized incendiary comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright during one or more sermons at the Trinity United Church of Christ.
Nevertheless, it was a brilliant political speech because it genuinely was from the heart and for the first time in many years addressed the one topic that continues to permeate throughout our democracy and remains the cancerous tumor it has always been: racism. What a dilemma for a black candidate in America! He can continue to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist—how disingenuous! On the other hand he can confront and deal with it—how dare he! In many ways, he is damned if does and damned if he doesn’t. This is not the same problem confronted by Sen. Clinton in her candidacy.
Do we really believe Americans will go to the polls and cast their vote for either a black man or a white man without the color of their skin playing no role whatsoever? Right.
For the first time in years I can remember, we had a candidate for public office put it all out there for the world to see. It was an incredibly honest speech evincing a candor that has not been seen or heard from since John Kennedy ran for office against Richard Nixon. This speech was thoughtful, well reasoned, logical, articulate, and courageous! Oh my goodness, it was written and delivered by a black man!
I particularly liked when he quoted William Faulkner. I can just hear President Bush now as he lamely asked, “did he see ‘Meet the Fockers?’” How nice it will be hear from a thoughtful, well reasoned, logical, articulate, educated President.
March 18, 2008 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink