Agenda Journalism: Dwelling on American Deaths & Enemy Successes

If you ran a newspaper and wanted to report objectively on the Iraq war, what formula would you follow? No doubt your headline would be about our main actions in the war zone that day. Your reporting would begin with our major activities, both the successes and failures of our units. As a part of reporting on these activities, you would make note of friendly casualties. We must never lose site of the sacrifice we are asking our soldiers to make as part of the war effort. We must acknowledge them and honor them.

But what if you wanted to push a particular agenda? What if you wanted to maintain only a facade of objectivity while doing your utomost to undercut support for the war in Iraq among Americans? How would you do it?

The answer of course is to place the greatest emphasis on the most negative news concerning the war. That would mean emphasizing news of enemy successes and friendly casualties over all else. It would mean reporting a butcher's bill as the headline and dwelling on that bill in the lead paragraphs every day. Enter the Washington Post Foreign Desk.

The Washington Post's Foreign Desk is not reporting the news objectively. They are shaping it in an effort to manipulate public opinion about the Iraq war. The formula that they follow is, by now, well established. Their daily headline on the news from Iraq announces the number of American or friendly casualties. Usually the majority of the story then dwells on these deaths. Only then, at the end of the article, is there any news about the activities of our military in Iraq. And even then, the news of our activities in Iraq and the successes we are having is more often then not incomplete and/or deliberately de-emphasized. In short, the Post is all about agenda journalism. They are making a transparent canard of their supposed journalistic objectivity. One need look no further then today's Washington Post reporting on Iraq to see the formula of agenda journalism in action:

At Least 14 U.S Soldiers Die in Attacks in Iraq
U.S. Forces Continue Efforts to Oust Insurgents From Diyala Province

By John Ward Anderson and Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 21, 2007; 10:06 AM

BAGHDAD, June 21 -- Fourteen U.S. soldiers have died in scattered attacks in Iraq over the last two days, including five killed Thursday by a roadside bomb in a northeastern Baghdad neighborhood, the military said in a series of statements.

With a major U.S. effort to oust insurgents underway in Diyala province north of the Iraqi capital, a series of five attacks elsewhere claimed the lives of American soldiers on patrol in Baghdad, in the restive Al Anbar province, and southwest of the capital.

Few details were released. But the military said that the deadliest attack involved a unit working with the Iraqi Security Force to "clear and control" a section of northeastern Baghdad. Along with the five U.S. soldiers who were killed, three Iraqi civilians and one Iraqi interpreter died, and one other soldier and two Iraqi civilians were injured.

In other incidents, a U.S. soldier died and three were wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their vehicle in northern Baghdad early this morning; four U.S. soldiers died yesterday when a roadside bomb detonated near a convoy in western Baghdad; two Marines were killed Wednesday during combat operations in Al Anbar province; and two other Marines died and four were injured by an explosive device near their vehicle southwest of Baghdad.

As part of a surge of some 28,500 additional troops into Iraq, U.S. forces have moved more deeply into Baghdad neighborhoods in an effort to flush out insurgents, and American officials have said that an increase in casualties was likely.

The series of attacks in the last two days occurred away from the scene of a major U.S. offensive unfolding north of Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi forces are attempting to stamp out the Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq from the city of Baqubah. . . .

Only after dwelling on the casualties does the Washington Post get to the news from the Iraq War. In all fairness to the Post, this is one of the rare articles when the Post actually fleshes out the activities of our forces in Iraq:

About 10,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops are participating in the new offensive, called Arrowhead Ripper, which began early Tuesday in Diyala, a mixed Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish province north and east of Baghdad that, in recent months, has become a stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the most violent area in the country outside of the capital. Forty-one insurgents and one American soldier were killed in two days of fighting, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

"We have found three warehouses and factories where car bombs cars were built, as well as large stashes of TNT and mortar rounds used to make" roadside bombs, said Mohammed al-Askari, an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman. "We also found the swords that they used to slaughter people in their so-called courts, in addition to sniper rifles and silencers."

The U.S. military said in a statement that five weapons caches had been found and that 25 roadside bombs and five booby-trapped houses had been discovered and destroyed.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, said the military was investigating the mistaken bombing of a house in the Khatoon neighborhood of Baqubah on Wednesday. The incident occurred when soldiers decided to destroy a heavily booby-trapped residence with an aircraft bomb, but the bomb hit the wrong house, Garver said. He said it was unknown whether there were any casualties in the strike. Later, a helicopter destroyed the targeted house with a Hellfire missile, and there were large secondary explosions, Garver said.

Askari said that the offensive "has developed greatly" and that U.S.-led forces were starting a "second phase by surrounding and isolating the areas in which the terrorists are located."

The U.S. military has been sharply criticized -- particularly from within its own ranks -- for earlier offensives against al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents that allowed them to slip away and regroup in other areas. As soon as U.S. forces withdrew, the insurgents typically returned.

This time, military planners are trying to avoid that outcome by drawing a tight ring around Baqubah that locks insurgents inside, where they can be captured or killed. The challenge was illustrated Tuesday by the capture of six uninjured men who were trying to escape from Baqubah in an Iraqi ambulance, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Commanders "said we need to cordon off the city and control access in and out, which is what we did yesterday morning, and now we are very deliberately doing house-to-house clearing," said Capt. Jon Korneliussen, a U.S. military spokesman. "Many houses were wired with explosives."

. . . Sunni fighters from a variety of insurgent groups that have fought U.S. forces in the past -- including the Islamic Army and the 1920 Revolution Brigades -- were now working closely with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the offensive, helping them identify al-Qaeda in Iraq members and facilities. The fighters, operating under an umbrella group called the United Jihad Factions Council, have been issued special insignias to distinguish them from al-Qaeda in Iraq members, he said. . . .