Good News Is No News
If it doesn’t bleed, it not only doesn’t lede … it doesn’t get covered. Media abandons surge success. Washington Post:
BAGHDAD — The number of foreign journalists in Baghdad is declining sharply, a media withdrawal that reflects Iraq’s growing stability and the financial strains faced by some news organizations.
In a stark indication of the changing media focus here, the number of journalists traveling with American forces in Iraq has plummeted in the past year. U.S. military officials say they “embedded” journalists 219 times in September 2007. Last month, the number shrank to 39. Of the dozen U.S. newspapers and newspaper chains that maintained full-time bureaus in Baghdad in the early years of the war, only four are still permanently staffed by foreign correspondents. CBS and NBC no longer keep a correspondent in Baghdad year-round.
“It remains important and it remains interesting,” said Alissa J. Rubin, the New York Times’ acting bureau chief in Baghdad. “But what’s in front of us now is almost a static situation. There’s not a clear narrative line. The stories are more complex.”
Veteran journalists say stories about Iraq, where roughly 155,000 U.S. troops are deployed and where the United States spends approximately $10 billion a month, have become tougher to get on the air and into print. News coverage that once centered largely on the U.S. military experience is shifting, like the country itself, to a story of Iraqis taking the halting, often mundane steps toward building their own government.
Yeah, well, as I recall, news coverage once centered largely on death tolls. Moving on, nothing to see here. Some good quotes:
The evolving story in Iraq does present editing and conceptualization challenges right now,” New York Times foreign editor Susan Chira said in an e-mail. “It’s more amorphous. There’s less overt conflict. And government and public attention is to some degree shifting to Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
This is interesting:
U.S. military officials say they remain eager to embed journalists with U.S. troops, but many journalists in Baghdad say the military has grown reluctant to take journalists to the front lines. Coverage of recent military operations in Basra, Sadr City, Mosul and Diyala province, for example, relied heavily on phone reporting and information from Iraqis working as stringers for Western news organizations.
But privately, U.S. military officials acknowledge that they are not eager to showcase American military-led combat operations at a time when the Iraqi government is calling for a more limited role for U.S. troops and pushing for firm withdrawal timelines.
“It’s very clear that they are trying to push us away from active areas of combat and trying to push us to places” where reconstruction and training are underway, said Associated Press bureau chief Robert H. Reid. “It’s very difficult to pick an embed unit and be relatively assured you will see active combat.”
At last check, AP and Reid in particular weren’t much interested in active combat.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:37 am on Sunday, October 12, 2008
5 Responses to “Good News Is No News”
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October 12th, 2008 at 11:09 am
“It remains important and it remains interesting,” said Alissa J. Rubin, the New York Times’ acting bureau chief in Baghdad. “But what’s in front of us now is almost a static situation. There’s not a clear narrative line. The stories are more complex.”
I think that stands as almost a perfect example of what’s wrong with most journalism today.
We can commiserate with her, though. Ah, the good old days of body counts and daily car bombings! Things were so uncomplicated, the narrative was clear, life was good. It’s so much harder now, with all that icky progress and stuff going on, and you have to actually get out there and *talk* to people and work to understand the situation if you want to get a story. Forget that! Better to ignore it instead, and get on with job #1 - pin the latest financial crisis on the Republicans and get Obama elected.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Yeah, that part also struck me as being ironic as heck, FB. Also quite contradictory. In MSMspeak, “static” is not “clear”, it’s “complex”. Funny, I’ve always found that static is simple: ain’t nothing changing.
Which does not describe Iraq right now. So Jules is right: “static” is now a codeword for “there ain’t enough people dying to bother covering the story.”
October 12th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
“U.S. military officials say they “embedded” journalists 219 times in September 2007. Last month, the number shrank to 39″
You gotta hand it to ‘em, though. The MSM is employing a pretty robust exit strategy.
October 12th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden notes one of the reasons you might have an out of date perspective on the situation in Iraq: . . . U.S. military officials say they “embedded” journalists 219 times in September 2007. Last month, the number shrank to 39. [...]
October 12th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
[...] leave a comment » Nothing to see here, move along. [...]