The sun is shining in Baghdad

[Texpat]

As troops do better on Iraq battlefield, relations with the media improve

By Thom Shanker, International Herald Tribune
Jan 6, 2008

WASHINGTON: The anguished relationship between the military and U.S. news organizations appears to be on the mend as battlefield successes from the troop increase in Iraq are reflected in more upbeat news coverage.

Efforts by the new Pentagon leadership, as well as by top commanders at the headquarters in Baghdad, have also helped to ease tensions between reporters and those in uniform. Positive or negative, the troops' view of the media is set as much by the tone of commanders as by the tenor of individual news clips.

General David Petraeus, the senior American officer in Iraq, and his subordinates have worked hard to convey the rationale for their strategy and the evidence that persuades them it is succeeding. Admiral Mike Mullen, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has engaged reporters in a variety of locations: at the Pentagon, on travels across the United States and overseas, including in the Middle East.

And, perhaps most important, their boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, has stated a view never heard from his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld.
"The press is not the enemy," Gates tells military audiences, including those at the service academies. "And to treat it as such is self-defeating."

At the start of the Iraq war, decades of open hostilities between the military and the media dating from Vietnam were forgotten, if only briefly. One reason was the embedding program for the Iraq invasion, in which hundreds of reporters from across the journalistic spectrum were placed with combat units. Soldiers and correspondents shared tents, meals and risks, and both sides said that perhaps their differences were not irreconcilable after all.

Then, however, the success of the quick invasion became not the full story, but merely the early chapter of a frustrating and deadly narrative of war in Iraq. As insurgent violence rose in 2003, echoes of the earlier conflict in Southeast Asia could be heard. The downturn accelerated with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004. The credibility of the armed forces fell even further in the eyes of reporters when it was disclosed that military contractors in Baghdad had paid Iraqi reporters for stories in the local media.

In return, the military's familiar complaints resumed: There is no coverage of the good news from Iraq, officers said. The focus is on violence and daily casualty counts, and not progress. Reporters cannot or will not get out and about in Iraq to tell the whole story. Editors and reporters are biased.

As recently as October, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who had served as the first commander of the Iraq occupation, came out of retirement to condemn coverage of the war.

"The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas," Sanchez said in comments that were given far less coverage than his equally harsh statement that the Bush administration had mismanaged the war.

"What is clear to me," Sanchez told a media group, Military Reporters and Editors, "is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war."
Just days earlier, in his valedictory address as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace used his final minutes as the nation's highest-ranking officer to describe how his interactions with Congress and the media had soured him on both.

"In some instances right now, we have individuals who are more interested in making somebody else look bad than they are in finding the right solution," Pace said.

But as the tone of news reporting from Iraq has shifted in recent months, so have the views commonly heard from officers in Iraq. Recent interviews with dozens of military officers in Iraq found a sense of frustration that the war was receiving less coverage than they would like - but a sense nonetheless that the coverage was forthright and balanced.

"The media in general is doing a pretty good job portraying the situation," said Lieutenant Colonel Rodger Lemons, operations officer for the 1st Cavalry Division's 4th Brigade Combat Team.

Interviewed last month in Mosul as he was completing a 15-month tour, Lemons said: "Spectacular attacks still get the big media attention. I would like to see more good news. Who wouldn't? But the reporters who have embedded with us have been fair."

In a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism of news reports published last year, more than half of all coverage of Iraq was found to be pessimistic. The view of American policy and military progress was mixed overall, with 4 in 10 pieces offering mixed assessments, one third offering negative views and one quarter more optimistic.

The troop increase ordered by President George W. Bush in January began to show results over the summer, and improving trends in security have received commensurate coverage. The Pew researchers found that positive assessments of the expanded American military operations had begun to rise in November.

The survey of journalists and the study of their reports are at Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) | Understanding News in the Information Age.

"It is obvious that many of the stories in print and television now have a more positive tenor; it ties directly to what is happening on the ground," said Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton, public affairs officer for Multinational Corps-Iraq and also the spokesman for Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, commander of day-to-day military operations.

"I'm satisfied that the majority of reporters on the ground want to get the story right and are responsive when their reporting is seen as less than accurate and we call them on it," said Hutton, who is nearing the end of his second tour of duty in Iraq.

Setting the tone from the top, Petraeus decided that managing the military's media mission required a high-ranking career public affairs officer, and he assigned Rear Admiral Greg Smith, previously chief of information for the United States Navy, to be director of communications for Multinational Force-Iraq, the top military command structure in the country. Smith, the first one-star public affairs officer in Baghdad, acknowledged that troops who had served previously in Iraq "may have lived through a time when it seemed that all that was being reported was negative news, even though they were doing so much good on any given day that was not being reported."

"I think there was a period time in the past in which reporting was behind reality," Smith said. "Today, that gap between perception and reality has closed, if not completely."

Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl, public affairs officer for Multinational Division-Baghdad for the past 15 months, described one concern heard often from officers in Iraq - the lack of reporters covering the war as it entered another decisive period during the troop increase.

"In general, I thought the majority coverage was very accurate and fair," said Bleichwehl, who has served twice in Iraq. "There were not always enough reporters there full time to provide the complete story of what was going on in a city with seven million people, much less the rest of the country."

As troops do better on Iraq battlefield, relations with the media improve - International Herald Tribune


***

I find it more than coincidence that the anti US rhetoric regarding Iraq has all but disappeared since the recent turning of the tide a few months ago. As with a handful of other positive threads posted recently, this one too will likely receive little attention, proving the point that good news doesn't sell.

I fully understand TD members would rather debate the merits of shagging Betty over Wilma (not disparaging the thread, I contributed ) over the deescalation of events in Iraq.

When the shoe was on the other foot, however, fire-breathing dragons couldn't deter TD's foreign policy experts, military strategists and cultural tribal leaders from storming the Castle of Righteousness to save the fair and innocent but oppressed maidens of Iraq.

I'm reminded by the scene in Apollo XIII when every national media outlet refused to carry Lovell's broadcast from space. They clammored for access, however, when Houston had "a problem."

From what I can gather, things are looking up in Iraq. Violence is down and people are getting on -- but it's not a return-to-normal. My memory isn't so short to have forgotten that "normal" was a brutal regime that terrorized and slaughtered its citizens there when coalition forces arrived.

For the few who will come charging into this thread with guns blazing, I hope you get your coordinates and comm straight because you're running out of airspeed and altitude fast.

Then again, Betty Rubble might be better entertainment.

[AntRobertson]

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here? I don't know that anyone on either side of the fence was wishing for a drawn out occupation. I certainly wasn't. The longer there is violence then the more deaths (on both sides) there will be - surely nobody wants that.

My view on the Iraq war has always been that I was against it because the basis for it was the US Govt. being deliberately misleading and deceitful and it was illegal. You have to remember that 'removal of the tyrant Hussein', undoutably needed as it was, is only the last in a list of justifications/reasons. That and the fact there was clearly little thought given to the aftermath and consequences of an invasion/occupation.

I don't see how any of that's being inconsistent? Although I do take your point regarding 'good news not selling'.

[sabang]

We can't change history, and the mistakes made and twisted reasons given for the invasion of Iraq will remain something that, hopefully, we can learn from. It is the political leadership I hold accountable for this, not the military.

The Petraeus/ Gates team is unquestionably doing a far better job than it's predecessor, on every level. Thats good news. I am hoping that some of the infrastructural promises made can now be delivered on- Baghdad still only has sporadic running water and electricity.

[Rattanaburi]

I think a few English teachers from Thailand are going over there to open up new TEFL schools in downtown Baghdad near the KFC and Lotus that are opening up!

Whatever happens over there its gonna be a dangerous place for a long time especially for Europeans and Americans. When you can walk around the town freely without thinking you are going to be shot or beheaded things are better.

[blackgang]

It will be better soon, Tony Blair is going to run for Pres of the E.U. that will make it all better..

[Norton]

I don't know that anyone on either side of the fence was wishing for a drawn out occupation.

Nobody was wishing for a long drawn out occupation but should have expected it. Clearly the initial manning, planning and management of the war was flawed. The new direction is having positive effects and seems on the right course. IMO even more troops should be sent to accelerate the process of stabilizing the country. The US can't get criticized any more than they already have so the downside of more troops is small.

Disengaging completely from Iraq will take many years. I have stated before, invading Iraq was irresponsible and badly thought out but it is what it is. To withdraw prematurely when the situation is by most all accounts improving would be the height of irresponsibility.

Agree with Sabang's comment, "I am hoping that some of the infrastructural promises made can now be delivered on- Baghdad still only has sporadic running water and electricity."

Keeping in mind, during Saddam's reign, in order to get a decent skilled job you had to belong to the Baath Party. Allowing former Baath Party members to now hold government jobs related to infrastructure will certainly speed up development.

It may have been mentioned already but yesterday:

Iraqi Lawmakers Adopt De-Baathification

1 day ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's parliament adopted legislation Saturday on the reinstatement of former Baath party supporters to government jobs, a benchmark sought by the United States as a key step toward national reconciliation.

The voting was carried out by a show of hands on each of the law's 30 clauses. The bill, officially called the "Accountability and Justice" law, seeks to relax restrictions on the right of members of Saddam Hussein's now-dissolved Baath party to fill government posts. It is also designed to reinstate thousands of Baathists in government jobs from which they had been dismissed because of their ties to the party.
The dismissal of thousands of Baath Party supporters from these jobs had deepened sectarian tensions between Iraq's majority Shiites and the once-dominant Sunni Arabs.

The Associated Press: Iraqi Lawmakers Adopt De-Baathification