Karl Zinsmeister of the American Enterprise Institute completed his second tour of embedded journalism with the U.S. military in Iraq this year, and he has some thoughts on why press coverage of the war is so incomplete and often skewed.
There is a premium on sensationalism that overemphasizes bad news and problems. Deadline pressures, laziness, and a lack of imagination push coverage in the same gloomy direction. The easiest story to tell in war is to simply point the camera at something that has blown up. It takes more time to write about the 99 counterparts that are NOT in flames.Posted by Alan at July 15, 2004 05:29 PMI had to spend months in Iraq walking the streets with patrols, observing lots of humble happenings, every day all day, to get the fuller picture of daily accomplishments, shifting public opinion, rising competence, etc. You can’t get this story if you’re staying in the Palestine Hotel in the Green Zone and charging out only to describe the bombing aftermaths. And even if you could, your newspaper or TV network might not run it, because they want today’s drama, not the slower, subtler changes that historians will look back at and notice.
Ideological imbalance in the press corps also is a problem. A whole string of studies dating back a quarter century show that elite reporters are Democratic over Republican, liberal over conservative, dovish over hawkish by about ten to one. Don’t tell me that doesn’t matter (as some journalists will claim), particularly in a war which has taken on strong partisan colorations as this one has.
Another problem that interferes with full and accurate reporting is the cultural distance that separates most journalists from military men and military work. Few journalists have any friends or relatives in the military. They often know little about weapons or tactics or the physical and mental demands of fighting. They are often very different kinds of people from typical soldiers. I don’t think it’s healthy that there is such a sharp cultural divide between those who fight our wars and those who get to interpret them for the public. More reporters with military experience, or at least an appreciation of military rigors, ought to be recruited into our newsrooms.