OT: Editors Ponder Broad Picture in Iraq Reporting
- From: OLTICK@xxxxxxxxx (GT Tick)
- Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 14:20:59 -0500
I like it when an editor's honesty brings them to say things like what
Ms Goudreau says in the last sentence of this article.
I also miss Ernie Pyle and his ilk.
Tick
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August 15, 2005
Editors Ponder How to Present a Broad Picture of Iraq
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune, has
received the same e-mail message a dozen times over the last year.
"Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in
Iraq?" the anonymous polemic asks, in part. "Did you know that 3,100
schools have been renovated?"
"Of course we didn't know!" the message concludes. "Our media doesn't
tell us!"
Ms. Goudreau's newspaper, like most dailies in America, relies largely
on The Associated Press for its coverage of the Iraq war. So she finally
forwarded the e-mail message to Mike Silverman, managing editor of The
A.P., asking if there was a way to check these assertions and to put
them into context. Like many other journalists, Mr. Silverman had also
received a copy of the message.
Ms. Goudreau's query prompted an unusual discussion last month in New
York at a regular meeting of editors whose newspapers are members of The
Associated Press. Some editors expressed concern that a kind of bunker
mentality was preventing reporters in Iraq from getting out and
explaining the bigger picture beyond the daily death tolls.
"The bottom-line question was, people wanted to know if we're making
progress in Iraq," Ms. Goudreau said, and the A.P. articles were not
helping to answer that question.
"It was uncomfortable questioning The A.P., knowing that Iraq is such a
dangerous place," she said. "But there's a perception that we're not
telling the whole story."
Mr. Silverman said in an interview that he was aware of that perception.
"Other editors said they get calls from readers who are hearing stories
from returning troops of the good things they have accomplished while
there, and readers find that at odds with the generally gloomy portrayal
in the papers of what's going on in Iraq," he said.
Mr. Silverman said the editors were asking for help in making sense of
the situation. "I was glad to have that discussion with the editors
because they have to deal with the perception that the media is
emphasizing the negative," he said.
"We're there to report the good and the bad and we try to give due
weight to everything going on," he said. "It is unfortunate that the
explosions and shootings and fatalities and injuries on some days seem
to dominate the news."
Suki Dardarian, deputy managing editor of The Seattle Times and vice
president of the board of the Associated Press Managing Editors, said
that the discussion was "a pretty healthy one."
"One of the things the editors felt was that as much context as you can
bring, the better," Ms. Dardarian said. "They wanted them to get beyond
the breaking news to 'What does this mean?' "
She also said that as Mr. Silverman and Kathleen Carroll, The A.P.'s
executive editor, responded to the concerns, the editors realized that
some questions were impossible to answer. For example, she said, the
editors understood that it was much easier to add up the number of dead
than to determine how many hospitals received power on a particular day
or how many schools were built.
Mr. Silverman said the wire service was covering Iraq "as accurately as
we can" while "also trying to keep our people out of harm's way."
"The main obstacle we face," he said, "is the severe limitation on our
movement and our ability to get out and report. It's very confining for
our staff to go into Baghdad and have to spend most of their time on the
fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel," which is home to most of the press
corps. The hotel was struck by a tank shell in 2003, killing two
journalists.
Iraq remains the most dangerous place in the world to work as a
journalist, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. At least
13 media workers have been killed in Iraq so far this year, bringing the
total to 50 since the war began in 2003.
"Postwar Iraq is fraught with risks for reporters: Banditry, gunfire and
bombings are common," the committee's Web site says. "Insurgents have
added a new threat by systematically targeting foreigners, including
journalists, and Iraqis who work for them."
Mr. Silverman said The A.P. had already decided before the meeting that
it would have Robert H. Reid, an A.P. correspondent at large who has
reported frequently from Iraq, write an overview every 10 days.
Mr. Silverman also said the wire service would make more effort to flag
articles that look beyond the breaking news. As it turned out, he said,
most of the information in the anonymous e-mail message had been
reported by The A.P., but the details had been buried in articles or the
articles had been overlooked.
Before the meeting, The A.P. collected three articles by reporters for
other news organizations who were embedded with American troops and sent
them out over the wire to provide "more voice." Mr. Silverman said he
wanted to do more of that but the opportunities were limited because
there are only three dozen embedded journalists now, compared with 700
when the war began more than two years ago.
Ms. Goudreau, for one, found the discussion useful. By the end, she
said, editors were acknowledging that even in their own hometowns,
"we're more likely to focus on people who are killed than on the
positive news out of a school."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
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