March 27, 2006 6:09 AM

Guess what? The first casualty of war is truth. The second is perspective.

Logan Kicks Some Kurtz Bootay

Lara Logan smacked down the “negative Iraq War Coverage” charges

MY NEW HERO #33: Lara Logan

It seems that whenever things aren’t going well in Iraq, the Bush Administration and it’s apologists begin to whine and moan about the lack of “postive coverage” of the war effort. What about all of the GOOD things we’re doing in Iraq, they wonder? Why doesn’t the media always focus on the positive? Freedom is on the march! Democratic elections! Commerce! No more Saddam!

Well, sorry, y’all but when 40, 50, and 60 murdered and mutilated human bodies show up on street corners every day, it’s kind of hard to focus on the “positive”. When the moral equivalent of civil war grips the country, when Shiites kill Sunnis simply because of who they are and vice-versa, there’s not a lot of “positive” spin out there. Perhaps the biggest problem for this Administration is that it’s tough to spin sectarian violence in a way that looks anything resembling “positive”.

I’m sure there are “good” stories to be relayed from Iraq, but as I said, death and dismemberment tends to trump anything else. For those on the Right and within the Bush Administration to be pissing and moaning about the perceived lack of “positive coverage” is just plain disingenuous. The situation is what it is…and right now it ain’t pretty. Yes, we liberated Iraq…apparently so Sunnis and Shiites can kill one another. Hey, now, that’s a BIG improvement over Saddam, eh??

KURTZ: But critics would say, well, no wonder people back home think things are falling apart because we get this steady drumbeat of negativity from the correspondents there.

LOGAN: Well, who says things aren’t falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn’t see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.

What about all the American soldiers that died this week that you didn’t see on our screens? I mean, we’ve reported on reconstruction stories over and over again‚Äö√Ѭ∂I mean, I really resent the fact that people say that we’re not reflecting the true picture here. That’s totally unfair and it’s really unfounded.

…Our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things. They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can’t you find them? You don’t think that I haven’t been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let’s see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can’t take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they’re going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.

Oh, sorry, we can’t show this reconstruction project because then that’s going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked. I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country‚Äö√Ѭ∂.So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

I imagine that reporters like Logan would dearly love to be able to report something positive from Iraq. It’s just that the situation there now is such a clusterf—k that no matter how the Administration and it’s apologists try to spin it, murder and mayhem just doesn’t play well. Right now, though, that’s the dominant story, and it will likely continue to be the dominant story until Iraqis decide that they’re tired of the murder, the mayhem, and the sectarian strife.

No matter how much we might like it to be otherwise, Iraq is simply not a nice story. You can’t spin murder and beheading. The sooner the spinmeisters on the Right stop their whining and recognize the reality that currently is Iraq, the less meaningless propaganda we’ll be subjected to- not that we should reasonably be expecting that anytime soon.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Technorati

Technorati search

» Blogs that link here

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 27, 2006 6:09 AM.

You can't tug on Governor Goodhair's cape, and you can't spit into the wind was the previous entry in this blog.

A day with a half-million Mexicans is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Contact Me

Powered by Movable Type 5.12