History Forum / General / General Topics / June 2004

Better watch out. Thanking me can get you in trouble here <grin>.

Actually, it's not just media bias (IMHO) that prevents accurate reporting
from Iraq. Rather, it's several factors:

1. Bad news sells. It's just that simple and was the case long before nearly
every journalist was a lefty.

2. The situation is complex. Pretty hard to get this stuff into a 30 second
sound bite -- and even harder to keep it from being dull.

3. False Analogies. The powers that be in the US media world mostly grew up
in during Vietnam. Their misinterpretation of that war (i.e., that it proves
all insurgencies are invicible) colors their misinterpretations of this war.
As I have noted in past posts, there are profound differences between the
two wars that these folks are ignoring.

4. Geography. The insurgency is largely confined to a small area of Iraq --
the "Sunni Traingle" -- and isolated Shite spots in the south (like
Fallujah). Unfortunately, most of the journalists are in Bahgdad, which is
in the heart of the Sunni Triangle. And some things *are* worse in *Bahgdad*
than before the war, because Baghdad got dibs on everything. Power
generation is an example. The US Army Corps of Engineers estimates that Iraq
had a power generating capability of about 3300 MW (press reports said it
was around 4000 MW, but this appears to be from a prewar estimate, rather
than an "on the ground" analysis like the Corp's report). Bahgdad got
priority on power allocation, so most areas in Bahgdad (other than Shiite
neighborhoods) had power all the time. Currently, Iraq has about 4900 MW
(the goal is 6000 by the end of the month), but this is distributed evenly
throughout the country. Result is that everyone loses about 8 hours of power
per day. So while the country as a whole is getting more power, Bahgdad is
getting less. And since the journalists are mostly in Bahgdad, all they hear
is how bad things are.

Simlarly, 80% of the country is relatively quiet. Yet the journalists are
mostly in the 20% where the attacks mostly occur.

5. Politics. Let's face it -- good news from Iraq is good news for Bush. So
are journalists (who, according to polls, self-identify as liberal far more
than the general population) going to be willing to trumpet good news and
help Bush out? Especially if they have to take a hot 3 hour ride on a dirt
track to some Iraqi backwater to find the good news?

6. Poor Media Relations. The Coalition has, IMHO, underestimated the need
for positive media relations, especially in the face of a hostile US and UK
press. They could do a far better job than they are explaining the
successes. Still, they issue regular press releases that anyone can read:
http://www.cpa-iraq.org/  (note, by the way, the forthright reporting on the
Abu Ghreib situation).

7. CYA. Far too many "objective" journalists (and lefties in general)
predicted nothing but doom and failure in Iraq before the war. A constant
stream of good news would make them look like the idiots that they are.
Query how willing they are to go out of their way to make themselves look
stupid...

8. Demonization. While many countries in the Middle East and Europe were
glad to see Saddam go, they did not like seeing it done with American and
British troops. As a result, the Arab and European media demonize anything
American troops do in Iraq, and feed this biased coverage back to Iraqis
(and many Europeans) who accept it as fact. In the long run, I think that
Iraqis will look back on those al Jazeera screeds and say, "how could anyone
believe such foolishness?" But it's 2004, not 2014, and most Iraqis probably
do believe that American troops are spending most of their time committing
atrocities and doing nothing to protect Iraqis from terrorists and
criminals.

   This is all exacerbated by the Arab cultural tendency to blame
everything on someone else and to believe the most lurid conspiracy theories
(as long as they absolve Arabs of any blame for their own motley situation).
This is a phenomenon that Westerners have little appreciation of, unless
they've experienced it. I've handled business transactions in the Middle
East and have seen it up close. In 1998, a well-educated Quatari businessman
insisted to me that Saddam was a CIA operative and invaded Kuwait on the
CIA's orders. Trying hard to conceal my look of incredulity, I asked why we
would want him to invade Kuwait. "So that the Jewish arms dealers can sell
more weapons." Of course -- it's always those darned Jews. <sigh> What made
this such a chilling experience was that this was a member of the upper
class and a "mover and shaker". Yet he clearly believed this drivel. As did
his associates who all nodded approvingly as he related the "facts". I could
relate many other conversations like this, but I think you get my point.

9. Say It Enough and a Lie Can Become The Truth. Lefties motivated by an
anti-US bias have wailed, carped and caterwauled that we will fail since the
afternoon of 9-11-01. Despite clear and overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, they repeat the same tired jeremiads ad nauseum ad infinitum. This
has had some effect in making casual listeners uneasy about the situation.
Yet, these witless hysterics can't actually seem to produce much *evidence*
to support their contention that we are somehow "losing". Nor can they
articulate any specific, credible alternatives. But casual listeners don't
know that.

Anyhow, these are some of the reasons that I think that the reporting from
Iraq will be skewed to the negative for some time to come.

--Ty