PostWatch

Iraq's Untold Story: What's Boring Here Isn't Boring There

From Iraqi Press Monitor on Nov. 28:

Caring for Women
(Al-Mutamar) Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed al-Chalabi, who is also head of the Iraqi National Congress slate running for parliament, said there is no way to build the new Iraq without putting women in leading roles. He noted that women in Iraq had been marginalised for decades and described them as “patient mothers and active sisters.” He praised their roles in keeping Iraqi families together during the aggressive wars of former president Saddam Hussein. He emphasised that they must participate in the political process with fair representation equal to their social importance.
(Al-Mutamar is issued daily by the Iraqi National Congress.)

Jonathan Finer doesn't perceive much good news to report, but that's because he and his colleagues subscribe to the crashing-airplane school of journalism  and have not reflected  on some essential differences between the political culture of Des Moines and Baghdad. Declarations by national leaders about the political rights of women are just possibly more worthy of coverage in one place than another.

 

Iraq in the Post Today

U.S. Debate on Pullout Resonates As Troops Engage Sunnis in Talks, A1
Kidnapping in Iraq Challenges German Leader, A17
Bush Cites Need To Secure Victory in Iraq, A18
Virginia Man Among Iraq Hostages, A14
Death Tally Box, A19

Related in PostWatch: Iraq's Untold Story

Forest, Trees, Finer

From a live chat with Jonathan Finer, from Baghdad:

New York, N.Y.: Sir:

Representative Jack Kingston (R-GA) wrote yesterday, from Iraq, where he was visiting the troops, the following: "the war that we saw is not the same war that we are reading in the media everyday. In fact, our soldiers are very frustrated that the media is only reporting the bad news instead of highlighting the progress being made."

I agree with the Congressman. I have contact every day with troops in Iraq, and virtually all of them are frustrated that you people in the media are only reporting one side of the story. Do you have any comments?

Jonathan Finer: We hear this a lot from readers and soldiers. My view is that if we see evidence that things are improving, we report that. I wrote a story recently from Tall Afar about progress made by the Iraqi Army. But if we are constantly bombarded by incidents of violence, political in-fighting and other "bad news" stories, we have an obligation to report those too. I'll offer an analogy a reporter/friend here uses: if you go to the hospital for a check-up and are told you have a disease, you don't go back and tell your family all the illnesses you don't have. For now, the problems in Iraq seem to be the story.

What do you mean, "too?" That's easily 90% of what you report. Is 90% of what's happening in Iraq bombs and assassinations? Of course not. But click on my Iraq in the Post Today section, at left under Categories, to learn what the Post actually covers.

This is just a variation of the crashing-airplane school of journalism. It still seems not to have occured to the Post's staff that every step toward building a representative government in the Middle East is a remarkable adventure--outside of Israel, stunning. Finer belongs to a group that, at a fundamental level, doesn't understand the age it inhabits.

I'll give you another analogy: Manned flight to the moon was more newsworthy than non-crashing manned flight to Kennedy International.

Finer, reporting from Baghdad, proves that reporters can be brave while missing the point entirely.

But Can We Run With Them?

And what about nap time? I'm telling you I have issues!

Sorry, couldn't help thinking of kindergarten with the washingtonpost.com hed on Sara Goo's interesting story, TSA Would Allow Sharp Objects On Airliners. All kidding aside, this may make it mandatory for the good guys--presumably you, and me--to at least bring a six-inch screwdriver.

Now Would Be A Good Time To Use Your Technology on the Internets

On A8, Report on FBI Tool Disputed by Christopher Lee covers the FBI's rebuttal to a front-page story that ran Nov. 6, The FBI's Secret Scrutiny by Barton Gellman. Lee's lede today:

The Justice Department has criticized as misleading and inaccurate a Washington Post report about the FBI's expanded power to collect the private records of ordinary Americans while conducting terrorism and espionage investigations.

The Nov. 6 article detailed the dramatic increase in the use of "national security letters," a three-decade-old investigative tool that was given new life with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in 2001. The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, a hundredfold increase over historic norms, the article said....

I'm not a big fan of these letters--you get a Black Helicopter card for free when you join the vast right-wing conspiracy. But I'd like to see the FBI's rebuttal myself:

In a 10-page letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees last week, Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella said that the report contained "distortions and factual errors." He presented a 17-point rebuttal to what he variously described as inaccurate claims, insinuations and implications, either by The Post or by critics quoted in the article.

Post it, Posties. As of 10:45 a.m. Wednesday morning, it ain't there, though you have a link to the original story and a "Patriot Act Primer."

You've got a nice value-added example on another story today, where Bishop Says Edict Allows Some Gay Priests by Alan Cooperman has a link to an interview with Bishop William Skylstad, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

So--you know how to do this. Your obligation to post that letter increases if you're going to recruit Leonard Downie to make unrebuttable claims:

Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Post, said that the "Justice Department letter does not document any inaccuracies in our story on national security letters, which revealed the widespread use and limited oversight of this investigative tool. The letter relies on words like 'implies' and 'insinuates' to assert claims the story does not make. The story speaks for itself."

Great. Let the letter speak for itself.

Iraq's Untold Story: The Non-Ugly Americans

Via Hugh Hewitt, milblogger Major K:

 ...What I would like to point out is how US Forces are regarded here.  We have been asked to supervise or arbitrate at every level from neighborhood to national repeatedly.  The reason for this is because of the entrenched culture of corruption of the past 35 years.  Whether Sunni, Shia or Kurd, the presence of Americans at neighborhood council meetings, disputes and detention facilities is not only favored, but is often greeted with a sigh of relief.  The Iraqis know they will get fair treatment from us because ethnic group, tribal affiliation and political power do not weigh upon our measurement of justice.   

This brings two things to mind.  Firstly, the average Iraqi will often (not always) trust us more than other Iraqis outside of their family when it comes to fair and humane treatment.  Secondly, for all of the people at home and in the media that think we are such a widely hated and mistrusted "occupying force," I would like to know why they think the Iraqis hate their honest broker.  I have found that only the arhabi [terrorists] do.

 ...What I would like to point out is how US Forces are regarded here.  We have been asked to supervise or arbitrate at every level from neighborhood to national repeatedly.  The reason for this is because of the entrenched culture of corruption of the past 35 years.  Whether Sunni, Shia or Kurd, the presence of Americans at neighborhood council meetings, disputes and detention facilities is not only favored, but is often greeted with a sigh of relief.  The Iraqis know they will get fair treatment from us because ethnic group, tribal affiliation and political power do not weigh upon our measurement of justice.   

This brings two things to mind.  Firstly, the average Iraqi will often (not always) trust us more than other Iraqis outside of their family when it comes to fair and humane treatment.  Secondly, for all of the people at home and in the media that think we are such a widely hated and mistrusted "occupying force," I would like to know why they think the Iraqis hate their honest broker.  I have found that only the arhabi [terrorists] do.

Iraq in the Post Today

Hussein is Unruly As Trial Resumes, A16
Sunni Politicians Killed; 4 Adbuctions Confirmed, A16
Air Force Erred With No-Bid Contract, GAO Says, A17
Two Congressmen Slightly Injured in Iraq, A4 (brief)

Related in PostWatch: Iraq's Untold Story

It's Amnesty

Michael Fletcher and Darryl Fears write Bush Pushes Guest-Worker Program on A2:

President Bush promoted his administration's efforts to get a grip on illegal immigration, spotlighting a plan to tighten security along the southern border and calling for a guest-worker program that would allow about 11 million illegal immigrants to work legally in the country temporarily before forcing them to return home....

Like that's going to happen.

"I oppose amnesty," Bush said.

Then don't propose a three-year amnesty for people whose first sign of respect for American institutions is to break the law.

And we're supposed to believe that three years and millions of amnestied workers later there will be more will in the political elite for mass deportations? The Bush proposal is a Trojan horse, except for the part where it fools anyone.

The World of Tom Toles

1. Elected leader of the free world (Nov. 24, left)
2. A modern-day Hitler (Nov. 29, middle)
3. I suppose Grizzled Survivor Saddam is an improvement over the Comic Rascal Saddam we were treated to before (right)

If Only It Were So

From Howard Kurtz's live chat today:

Howard Kurtz: In almost all cases, journalists here and elsewhere try to identify where the source works (those ubiquitous "senior administration officials") or their motivation ("an official opposed to the policy"), though we could certainly do more of the latter. That's one reason there was such a journalistic uproar over Judith Miller telling Scooter Libby she would take information from him as a "former Hill staffer," though she wound up not writing anything and therefore didn't use that misleading description.

I can't remember a single time that an anonymous source was identified this way.* Certainly not in any of Dana Priest's recent stories. That doesn't mean it never happens, but if it does it's as rare as an ivory-billed woodpecker sighting. If any PostWatch readers can identify such a comment in a Post story using an anonymous source, send them in or leave a link in the comments box.

Maybe Howard Kurtz and other editors think it happens because it's supposed to? Or else when Kurtz says we could certainly do more of the latter he means and by more I mean at least once.

Update: Probably my favorite live-chat moment with Dana Priest was back on Aug. 4, when I generated this exchange:

Manassas, Va.: In your story yesterday about the Scorpions, what were the motivations of the officials who compromised the secrecy of this classified program? On those rare occasions when The Post uses anonymous sources, aren't you supposed to give us some insight into why anonymous sources are speaking to you?

Dana Priest: In most stories like this, it's an issue of trying to help me get it right, with some proper context, rather than wrong in some way. Both those stories took a very long time to put together....you are right about unattributed sources but only if they have some particular motive. In this case, I don't see an obvious one other than the one I just stated.

And the followup:

Manassas, Va.: Dana, thanks for taking the question on motives, but isn't there usually something going on more than some source being nice enough to help you get it right? Couldn't the motivations range from everything to a sincere interest in stopping the kind of abuse said to be committed by the Scorpions to outright opposition to the war effort? And don't you agree that conveying that kind of information will help us evaluate the situation?

Dana Priest: In some cases yes. But I won't apply it to this case.

In fact, as I've said recently, the motives for leakers are rarely addressed in the Post. It's obvious to me that this leaves a huge gap in the story if we're asked to believe there was just this kindly anonymous source looking out for the integrity of Dana Priest and the Washington Post--especially if the issue isn't addressed in the story....

Again, I can't recall any cases in which Priest has told us exactly why her anonymous sources are exposing classified operations in the war against terrorism.

*In the Post