“I happen to believe that we have tremendous strategic interests in what we're doing over here,” said Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, MNC-I commanding general. “I happen to believe this is the most important conflict that we've been involved in the last 50 years.”Now, here's the lede in the AP version:
America's outgoing No. 2 commander in Iraq said Tuesday that curbing unemployment and improving services would help reduce the violence in the country, warning that military muscle cannot win the war alone..From what I could gather the above-linked story from AP reporter Hamza Hendawi was their entire coverage of the event, not some parsed Topix rehash, but I could be mistaken. The WaPo ran with their own byline, quoting some of the AP quotes but not nearly as skewed. At any rate, it wasn't a big story this morning based on scans of the various news sites, but that's not the point of this post.
Not surprisingly the DoD-produced version doesn't include some of the more negative quotes contained in the AP version, but that's why we need the free press. The problem comes in when the free press decides to parse what they believe is important in the very same manner. This AP story will end up in the hands of news organizations all over the world, but the average person will not seek out the MNF website to find the full context of general's remarks.
Such selective quoting, such as focusing mainly on the power and services issue, can also unwittingly help the enemy cause. This report seems to give credence to previous stories such as this one, which highlight the calculated disruption efforts put forth by the Ba'athists in an effort to drive us out.
This, combined with the Jamil Hussein situation, should make everyone question the coverage coming out of Iraq, or at least search for balance.
No comments:
Post a Comment