The war in Iraq has placed extraordinary pressures on American newspapers.
The effort required to cover the distant war’s vastness – from the politics of the war’s legitimacy to the starkness of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians dying in the streets – has now grown into a protracted daily newsroom challenge rarely rivaled by other stories for its reach and importance.
The other stories, they seem to come and go. Arnold. Michael Jackson. Social Security. Barry Bonds. The Kings.
The war comes home in newspaper stories big and small, from dry descriptions about the new Iraqi constitution to the emotional hometown funerals of young men killed in uniform.
And these stories are well read, judging from responses to The Bee. Readers pore over the words, a few looking for political messages, media conspiracies and bias.
Most of the readers who have contacted me, though, raise legitimate questions, understand their own political bents and acknowledge the difficulties of obtaining information in a war where reporters are targeted by terrorists and the military is secretive. And they are sophisticated media consumers, relying on the Internet for a broader range of information.
One such reader is Miriam LeGare, 69, a retired Sacramento State University professor who taught in the school’s department of psychology.
She is disturbed by The Bee’s continued reference to the war having killed “tens of thousands of Iraqis.”
“Is this phrase being passed around the print media because it’s a convenient number?” she asked in a recent e-mail. “One might say that the numbers don’t matter, that any deaths are too many, or that a number is better than, ‘lots of deaths.’ But, since most of us consider numbers to be important, whether they estimate stock market performance, infant mortality or war dead, the least The Bee could do is chase down the source of ‘tens of thousands,’ and then tell its readers who, what, where, when and how.”
Unfortunately, that is the best estimate there is, says The Bee’s Mark Melnicoe, the paper’s national editor. Neither the Iraqis nor the Americans have come up with a precise tally, owing mainly to the war’s chaos and no standard reporting procedure.
The estimates of civilians killed range from 20,000 to about 100,000, the latter a worst-case scenario from the British Medical Journal Lancet. The 20,000 is a minimum according to tallies by the Associated Press.
“So ‘tens of thousands’ is almost certainly accurate,” Melnicoe said in an e-mail to me.
In an interview, LeGare suggested The Bee include a qualifier when referring to Iraqi deaths. “I would like to see more accuracy. I think it’s important,” LeGare said.
Bob McHale of Sacramento is 76 years old and a retired insurance investigator. His issue is with labels.
“The Bee continues to refer to terrorists in Iraq as ‘insurgents’ or ‘militants,’ ” McHale said in his e-mail. “Terrorists are those who employ terrorism as a political weapon. Terrorism is the systematic use of violence to create a climate of fear in a population and thereby bring about a political objective. What is going on in Iraq is clearly the use of violence to create a climate of fear to bring about a political objective. Why can’t The Bee properly characterize this activity?”
As in many newsrooms, The Bee has had internal discussions about what to call those fighting the United States and the fledgling Iraqi government. The editors are acutely aware of the labels’ nuances and their political overtones.
“They definitely are insurgents in that they are rebelling against the established power,” Melnicoe said. “Terrorist is a loaded word that we reserve for outright attacks on innocent civilians. We call these types of attacks, such as those done by suicide bombers, terrorism.”
Janet Thew is a 44-year-old Loomis resident and full-time volunteer who reads the paper daily. She said in an e-mail she doesn’t think she’s getting the war’s full picture.
She fears the paper is being cowed by conservatives and is not publishing the names and pictures of dead soldiers as well as the views of soldiers who have returned from Iraq and oppose the war, as she said is described in personal online journals and Web sites.
Thew would like The Bee to publish a box every day listing the names and hometowns of American soldiers killed.
“Real people are dying,” Thew said in interview. “It’s too easy to forget what is happening, too easy to go on with our lives and not see the losses. It makes a difference.”
Early in the war, The Bee published pages of pictures and descriptions of soldiers killed in Iraq. The paper stopped because it was taking up too much space, deciding instead to focus on soldiers from the Sacramento region and writing about them.
“We have no reason to avoid or ignore a story like that (soldiers opposed to the war), and in particular if soldiers returned to our area with that viewpoint, I’d think we would want to write something,” Melnicoe wrote. “But my understanding is that the vast majority of returning troops support our efforts over there.”
The end of the war is not in sight. The killing and the political maneuvering and the great stakes continue, as does the readers’ appetite for the story in all its facets.
The paper’s readers demand and expect nothing less.
