Jules Crittenden on Media in Iraq: ‘Lazy, Stupid or Willfully Ignorant?’

For those unfamiliar, Jules Crittenden is a city editor for the Boston Herald with a blog that is truly a daily must-read for those interested in top-notch media analysis.

On Thursday, Crittenden lambasted various mainstream press outlets for their lazy, stupid, or willfully ignorant coverage of the war in Iraq.

I highly recommend it be read in its entirety.

Early in his piece, Crittenden asked a question that should be on the minds of all Americans regardless of political leaning (emphasis added throughout):

[H]ow come, if this is the pressing issue of the day, we’ve seen no serious effort whatsoever among our leading news organizations to tell us or our political leaders what is actually happening?

Great question, wouldn’t you agree? Unfortunately, according to Crittenden, the war coverage has been woefully abysmal:

We’ve seen how the New York Times deals with Iraq. Pathetically inadequate. We talked about the AP. Shamelessly biased. Both of NYT and AP, along with the Washington Post, as the most influential U.S. news organizations, deserve to be more closely examined on exactly what they are contributing to our understanding of this situation.

Where is the comprehensive look at the execution of George Bush’s counterinsurgency strategy, this thing that everyone keeps disparaging?

Here’s the Washington Post’s listing of recent articles on Iraq. You won’t find it there. The Washington Post is attending press conferences and reading the tea leaves in DC.

[…]

NYT’s list of recent Middle East articles leading up to this much-anticipated week in mid-July offers nothing but the same DC bickering and Green Zone press conferences.

[…]

Despite the fact that the AP, these days, prides itself on putting together series and conducting special projects and in-depth looks just like a real newspaper. It’s been all over the problems war widows and the war wounded face, for example.

But the AP, as the primary source of international news for most American newspapers, deserves a closer look at its efforts on the ground in Iraq. The AP probably shapes more readers’ views about what is happening in Iraq than any other organization, and its performance there remains abysmal.

After a lengthy analysis of some recent Iraq reports by the AP, Crittenden concluded with some important questions we all should be asking as decisions about the future of this incursion are being made in Washington:

So please let me know if you find it: An actual, meaningful, in-depth look at the execution of the counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq by someone who has taken the time to understand what its goals and methods are, and isn’t just interested in kicking the crap out of it from a distance. An effort to understand and report fairly on what may be the last chance to prevent a bloody humanitarian disaster on a scale not seen since Cambodia, quick, before the opportunity is thrown away.

[…]

Clearly, it’s possible to move around with troops and talk to locals. Yon is doing it. Roggio did it. News reporters have done it by the hundreds when they and their organizations chose to do it. I can’t think of a good reason why these leading news organizations are not doing it in large numbers. It is well-established that embedding is a practical, comparatively safe way to get unfiltered information. The critics, like Hedges back in 2003, have been shown to have grossly misjudged the goodwill of the United States military and the incredible access embedding provides.

Nor is there really any good excuse for not understanding the goals and methods of this strategy, for serious news reporters, editors, politicians and even everyday readers who want to.

So the question is, are these leading news organizations lazy, or stupid, or is it that they just don’t want to know?

I’d like to add a fourth possibility: they just don’t want the American people to know.

The media have successfully moved the population from being for the incursion before it started in March 2003, to against it today. Why would they want to report anything that might change sentiment back when their clear goal is full retreat regardless of the consequences?

This is especially true as Congress moves closer and closer to fulfilling the media's prophecy.

In the end, since most press outlets changed their view on this war in late 2003 to assist Democrat candidates in the upcoming 2004 elections, the media have acted as powerful peace activists. With the president's poll numbers low, and Republican members of Congress starting to join the ranks of defeatocrats, there is absolutely no reason to investigate the facts now, let alone report them.

That would be too much like journalism for an activist media that sees themselves today as a more necessary branch of government than the three the Founding Fathers put in power centuries ago.