A Message From The Paranoid Right

That would be me, I guess, according to washingtonpost.com online blogger Emily Messner, who defends the Objective Press in its Iraq coverage. The post is another exhibit for the prosecution showing how the website's columnists skew left.

Dan Froomkin. Terry Neal. Jefferson The Nation Morley. Messner. Where to begin.

Messner objects to conservative blogs making snide remarks about Iraq coverage before reeling off her own greatest snide hits (MSM, for those not accustomed to reading the rants of the paranoid right, stands for "Mainstream Media" -- that is, the bastion of liberalism that refuses to report anything good about Iraq ever... Heaven forbid the press ever quote an Iraqi who's got a negative view of the current situation in Iraq or the country's soon-to-be constitution....Maxed Out Mama is appalled that the media would dare report that it's not all sunshine and daisies in Iraq) 

Now, being snide is one of the founding rights of bloggers-it's right there in the Constitution.  But--I guess--it's not the tone she objects to as much as the content. In which case Messner would do better to rebut more of what they actually say. For example, in her lineup of (relatively unknown) blogs, I couldn't find anyone demanding MSM report only good news. The gist of Maxed Out Mama's comments would be familiar to PostWatch readers: Mainstream media relentlessly focuses on negative news, and rather than being at least temporarily awed by another successful milestone on the path from oppression to democratic rule--in the freakin' Middle East!--instead of that, we're treated to another helping of extra-spicy quagmire. Recent examples in the Post include yesterday's For U.S., A Hard Road Is Still Ahead in Iraq, blogged here.

Is there anything wrong with reporting on the hard road that is still ahead? No. But MSM mainly presents two kinds of stories about Iraq. The first kind reports on everything going wrong. The second reports on futile signs of progress. That's what Glenn Kessler did yesterday in the story linked above. The lede:

For the Bush administration, the apparent approval of Iraq's constitution is less of a victory than yet another chance to possibly fashion a political solution that does not result in the bloody division of Iraq.

It's really simple folks; MSM is just doing a crappy job of telling us what's going on in the world. Merely factual journalism would spend a lot more time being amazed by the development of democratic government in a part of the world known for jihad, bans against free expression, and the state-sponsored murder of a country's own citizens. I'd like to suggest there's a place in the world for reporters to take sides in a war against people who want to destroy the society that makes journalism possible. But even on Messner's supposedly objective terms, MSM's product is defective.

If you understand this, you can see why Dave of Garfield Ridge objects to an AP story effectively  placing Saddam's make-believe parliament on the same plane as the one that millions of Iraqis once again risked their lives to create. Messner writes:

The AP did not label Saddam's parliament "democratically-elected" or "legitimate" or even "not absolutely the worst government ever conceived" -- it just reported that there was a "full-term parliament" in 2003, which is objectively true.

Well, one parliament is intended to represent the will of the people. The other was created to destroy it, and when Saddam was in power it did. If any Western regime perverted itself and gassed its own version of the Kurds and raped and dismembered dissenters, would the Messners of the world give all due respect by calling its stooge a parliament, and defend its coverage by talking about reporting "both sides of the story?"  I hope not.

And speaking of Dave of Garfield Ridge--that's probably the only blog Messner cites that has any kind of a reputation in larger blogging circles--no offense to the others, some of whose traffic is similar to my own. But Messner needs to take on the Big Dogs like Mudville Gazette  and the legacy of Arthur Chrenkoff if she wants to improve her vision. I suggest starting with the last installment of Chrenkoff's Good News From Iraq, Part 35, a 17,500-word summary of progress in Iraq, most of which is either ignored or grossly downplayed in Messner's just-the-facts MSM. Then from here on out, she can check its successor, Good News Central, and then search in vain for its counterpart on the Washington Post. My own modest series Iraq's Untold Story is a drop in the bucket compared to those guys.

You can read the Post's coverage of the war in Iraq and end up being less informed than when you started. Message to MSM: Fix it.

Update: Linked to James Joyner's generous Beltway Traffic Jam at Outside the Beltway.