The Western press could use a little coaching from Rich Galen,* mentor to members of the Iraqi press in the days following Operation Iraqi Freedom. Probing questions should elicit facts, not spin them out of whole cloth, as they have in the last news cycle -- from the New York Times on down (up?) -- re possible al Queda/Saddam connections that may or may not be discerned in the latest interim 9/11 commission staff report. Let's listen to what Iraqi leaders have to say about the quality of our press product: "I hope you from the American press will be able to tell people back home . . . that (through) this mission you are giving an entire nation an opportunity to be rid of their challenges," Iraq's deputy prime minister told a group of American reporters traveling in Iraq with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz yesterday, reports DefenseLINK News:
"These soldiers are helping renovate schools and so on, and very, very little of that is reported," Salih continued. "We have to be grateful to those young men and women who have come from afar, sacrificing their lives to defend our security and our freedom."
He said context is important, and many American papers don't put things in the proper context.
New Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawer explained his belief that 90 percent of what's happening in Iraq is good news, and 10 percent in bad. "The media is magnifying the 10 percent, ignoring the 90 percent."
Noting that Iraqis "have been breastfed hatred to the United States and Great Britain for 45 years," he said said he and other Iraqi leaders are working to acquaint the Iraqi people "with the real values of the American Bill of Rights and other great things you have in your constitution."
[via Hobbs Online via InstaPundit]
*We're reminded of something Rich Galen said last week during hearings before Congressman Christopher Shays' committee -- blogged here -- re the burgeoning Iraqi press (summary from memory):
At first they didn't understand about asking "tough" questions. Under Saddam's regime, tough questions could have cost you an arm and a leg. Galen spent time coaching them in the probing arts of the journalist. They were quick studies and scooped the West. It was Iraqi journalists and not the U.S. or European press that discovered and promulgated the UN Oil-for-Food scandal.
Then there's the BBC, in a class by itself as Tom Gross writes in National Review, "virtually conducting its own anti-American and anti-Israeli foreign policy." [via Andrew Sullivan]
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.