Once again the WP does a news story on Iraq that concentrates wholly on the negative, including a list of U.S. casualties, with no mention of on-going U.S. operations nor enemy killed and captured. Read the travesty here. It is akin to the sports announcer: "Its the Yankees 3, and in other games . . . " How about those journalistic ethics?
The WP reports that al Qaeda in Iraq and an opposing Sunni Baathist insurgent group, the Islamic Army of Iraq, have declared a cease fire against each other in the Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriyah. The two groups fought each other for several days over the past week. The WP also reports four U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq, several relative minor carbombings occurred, and that 4 million Iraqis have been according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The WP ignores all positive news from Iraq. For example, the military reported today that coalition forces killed four terrorists, detained 23 others, and discovered multiple weapons caches during recent operations targeting al Qaeda in Iraq. That same report tells of significant cooperation by local Iraqi's and of Iraqi police foiling a suicide bombers targeting police recruits. You might also wish to review graphs of US and insurgent casualties during the surge. And you can find a discussion of the growth of Iraqi forces - growing at a very fast pace - here. The bottom line, it is not possible to rely on the Washington Post as a sole source for accurate reporting from Iraq.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Washington Post Gives Only The Negative News from Iraq
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hey, it's no better over here in the UK. The BBC's Newsnight programme headline for last night was about a British Infantry Officer in Iraq who thought the war was basically unwinnable (well there's a lot of soldiers over there, I thought, so you're bound to find one with that view, if you insist on looking for him!). And the only mention on the main news programmes was about the 150th British serviceman to be killed over there. And ITV is usually no better. Worse, if anything.
It's not like I want a British version of 'Pravda', but some balance would be nice...
I can remember sitting in a flat in London a few months after the Iraq invasion and just having my jaw drop at the one sided and over the top reporting of the BBC. It was worse even then the New York Times. But at least the NYT is subject to market forces, and its one sided reporting over the past five years has seen its stock value drop by over 50%.
Eventually, the NYT and their ilk will die on the free market vine. The problem with the BBC is that it is not subject to the free market. I feel sorry for everyone across the pond on that account.
Post a Comment