I couldnt stop thinking last week about the all but forgotten story of Lynn Bradach.
She is the mother of Travis Bradach-Nall, a 21-year-old Marine and Grant High School graduate who was killed in Iraq clearing mines on July 2.
I couldnt stop thinking about Lynn Bradach because the handling of her story offers evidence for the essence of the criticism of coverage of the aftermath of the Iraq war.
Even though the official fighting of the war ended months ago, the newspaper still generally receives more complaints and letters about Iraq coverage than any other subject. Last week, many readers called to criticize The Oregonians shifting of much of the coverage of Iraq from the front to the back pages of the first section.
Readers say they simply want to know more than theyre being told: More about the soldiers and Iraqi civilians who are dying. More about how Iraq is faring.
The thirst for news about Iraq persists, and the media are not necessarily delivering what the public needs to know. A new study shows widespread misperceptions of issues related to the Iraq war among those who follow the news in newspapers and on television.
The study by researchers with the Program on International Policy Attitudes out of the University of Maryland found those who rely on newspapers solely for their news have fewer misperceptions. Yet almost one half of those who rely on newspapers believed at least one of these untrue statements about the war: that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al-Qaida; that weapons of mass destruction have already been found in Iraq; and that world opinion favored the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Many readers complained that The Oregonian missed an opportunity recently to correct one of those misperceptions. When Bush announced there was no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks, the newspaper buried that news within another story about Iraq, although several newspapers played the announcement on Page One.
Other readers complained that the misunderstanding of Iraq makes it critical to prominently play stories about the country. They disagree with putting news on developments that dont rise to Page One further back in the newspaper on many days. Editors moved the Iraq news in part because of a redesign of Page A-2 that aims to serve readers with limited time for the newspaper. They promise that the space lost to cutbacks early last week will be restored, so Iraq coverage will regain space, if not its earlier prominence.
But both supporters and opponents of the war also say they want more stories to reflect the conditions within Iraq. Supporters of the war say few stories point to progress being made in the country. Opponents say stories rarely focus on civilian deaths in Iraq.
The criticism is not entirely fair. Recent stories on providing attorneys to detainees, ridding Saddam Hussein from school curriculum, measuring progress in Iraq and intrafamily marriages told readers much about life in the country. Reporter Patrick ONeill covered Mercy Corps efforts in Iraq. But most of the coverage is devoted to events shootings or bombings, the political fight over financing, pleas before the United Nations and disputes over the leak of a CIA operatives name rather than enterprise and investigations from within Iraq.
Both supporters and opponents of the war also complain that even deaths of soldiers have been mostly relegated to the back pages and short updates.
For example, after three soldiers were killed by insurgents in Iraq last Tuesday, The Oregonian played the story on Page A10. When three Oregon soldiers were ambushed and injured near Mosul last month, The Oregonian buried the story on Page C5 of the Metro section, although it reported on the return home of one of the soldiers last week on Page One.
With a few exceptions, stories of local soldiers and their families today largely result from coverage of events. Most stories stem from the arrivals and departures or call-ups of units, ones that can be found on television news, even though one of the largest and longest mobilizations of the Oregon National Guard is under way. As with other newspapers, coverage of local soldiers has dropped since the height of the war; at that time, The Oregonian embedded two reporters with military units and extensively covered local soldiers.
Yet while those journalists returned to other subjects, Marine Travis Bradach-Nall volunteered to stay in Iraq.
After he died while clearing a mine field, the story of his death was displayed on The Oregonians Metro cover, not Page One, although another war-related story was on the front page for that Fourth of July.
His mother let other family members do interviews immediately after Travis died; she was in no shape to talk. In fact, she says it actually has been too painful to read the stories written immediately after his death, but was told they were well done.
But since then, she has talked with The New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corp., in part to draw attention to the countrys failure to find weapons of mass destruction the stated reason for war. The Oregonian has never followed up to learn about her views, how while she praises what the military taught her son she also is working to rid the world of land mines.
Travis mother laughs when sharing pictures of him playing the drums, after the Jingle Bell Run when she last saw him at Christmas or mugging with his Marine buddies. She smiles recalling how the boy who once was a typically standoffish teenager called her four days before he died to ask her to a Marine Corps ball in Las Vegas. His life was full, she says, but it also was full of promise.
She mourns the loss to Oregon of all the young promise in the war. She urges journalists to keep their attention from straying, to keep reminding the public both of that lost promise and the promises made by leaders before the war began.
I want everybody to be touched and to look at your child and realize that it could be your child, she says.
Everybody must pay attention. Pay attention.
