Tsunamis strike South Asia, and no one demands a report of how well things are going elsewhere in the region.
An airplane crashes into a hillside in Greece, but nobody calls for news of civic improvements in Athens.
Readers understand that when tragedy strikes, journalists focus on the human toll.
In the case of the Iraq war, however, another factor comes into play: politics.
Those who don’t feel strongly one way or the other about the war just expect to be informed about what is happening. Those who oppose the war want a full report of its costs. Those who favor the war want less about the losses and more about the gains.
That last group believes that anything that reflects poorly on the war has the potential to undermine public support for the politicians who began it and to deflate the troops’ morale. Its members put ribbons on their cars imploring others to “Support Our Troops” and write letters to newspapers demanding good news from Iraq.
I hear often both from people who strongly favor and those who strongly oppose the war in Iraq. I have yet to hear from anyone who doesn’t support the troops. In fact, those who oppose the war seem to do so largely out of concern for the troops.
People who favor the war frequently send along accounts they’ve found on the Internet about how well things are going in Iraq and wonder why they haven’t seen that in the Sentinel.
There are several reasons:
The Sentinel is a regional newspaper that deploys its staff to cover what’s happening in Central Florida and news elsewhere that is of specific interest to Central Floridians. Although it twice sent two journalists, writer Roger Roy and photographer Hilda Perez, to Iraq, the newspaper does not maintain a newsgathering team in that country.
News organizations generally do not disseminate information they cannot verify or for which, as is the case with much on the Internet, they cannot identify a source.
Consequently, the Sentinel is dependent on the dispatches of wire services, such as The Associated Press and Reuters, and of other newspapers that do have journalists in Iraq for information about what happens there. Those journalists operate under very restrictive and, frankly, dangerous conditions. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based organization, reports that 52 journalists have died of hostile action in Iraq since the war began.
The journalists who are risking death to cover the war are there to do just that: keep people back home apprised of how the fighting is going. News organizations likely would have little luck trying to recruit reporters and photographers to put their lives on the line to cover feature stories — and would have to question the sanity of anyone who would take that assignment.
Still, the belief persists among many readers that the Sentinel is suppressing all the good news out of Iraq.
They might be interested in what the military has to say about the situation there:
The Multi-National Force-Iraq’s (http://www.mnf-iraq.com) top news item last week was the following: “A wall hanging was dedicated to 43 men and women of Kellogs [sic], Brown and Root who have died in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom Aug. 3 in a ceremony here. One of those 43 remains missing.”
The Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (http://www.mnstci.iraq.centcom.mil) reported: “As word spread earlier this year that any Iraqi Police personnel would be dismissed if they couldn’t pass a literacy test, some Iraqi police leaders expressed concerns.”
Defend America (http://www.defendamerica.mil) included this: “Dahuk, Babylon, and Wassit governorates will see an upgrade in treated potable water. The projects will upgrade 15 systems each, including water wells, compact potable water treatment plants and pumps.”
Wall-hangings and water-system improvements, of course, are hardly the equivalent of lost lives, but it seems unlikely that any of the above would make naysayers rethink their positions.
That, of course, isn’t the newspaper’s purpose. It’s just supposed to inform and keep things in perspective.
