As bad as the news from Iraq is day in and day out, as high as the body counts are from this truck bombing or that suicide attack, the full picture of the mayhem and the carnage and the randomness of life and death in Iraq will likely never be known to us.
The reason for that is simple -- the inability of anyone in the press to go out and find out what's going on without armored vehicles, security staff and an overarching sense of dread and paranoia.
It is so bad in Iraq that news organizations have drawn up escape plans in case Baghdad collapses. And yet, a few of them contune to push the crap that the surge is working.
Many news organizations have escape plans should American and Iraqi forces completely lose control of Baghdad, a squalid city brimming with weapons and sectarian animosity. For the media, security concerns have become an obsession.
Before they go out on assignments, correspondents work through a litany of questions: Where is it? What time is it? How can I get there? How can I get back? Who can I talk to? Who controls the neighborhood? Who guards the checkpoints? Is there enough fuel in the car and plenty of air in the tires? Is this story worth the risk?
To blend in, female journalists often don an abaya, a long robe worn by Muslim women, and a head scarf. Some male reporters with dark features grow mustaches and beards and try to emulate the attire of Iraqi men. Some blonds dye their hair black. Many operate on the 15-minute rule: They never stay longer in any one place for fear that someone with a cell phone will alert killers that a soft target is in play. Sometimes the smallest things can expose them. Wearing a seatbelt in a car is a clear giveaway: Iraqis rarely use them.
In an atmosphere like that it should be obvious that the information that does get out is only an abbreviated version of reality -- a small, unverifiable fragment of what is actually going on.
Some media organizations like the New York Times and CNN have spent millions to build fortresses and maintain a private army of hired guns.
It's hard to cover a story from behind blast walls, but there doesn't seem to be much choice.
"You cannot move; you cannot go anywhere on your own," says Detroit Free Press photojournalist David Gilkey, who returned from his eighth trip to Iraq in January. Deadly strikes, he says, can come from any direction--an IED planted underground, a sniper on the roof of an apartment building, a gunman hiding in the trunk of a car, a teenager strapped with explosives, a car bomb set off by remote control as the killers sip tea nearby.
"Every time you get out of the vehicle, you are almost paralyzed, with your eyes darting around looking for where the shot might come from. Every time you are riding around it's all you can do to keep from plugging your ears, waiting for the blast to happen," says Gilkey, who survived an IED explosion on his last trip.
The danger requires that media organizations spend incredible sums to try to protect their people. Private security personnel are said to cost $1,500 per day per person. Armored vehicles are $100K each.
It means that a dwindling number of media organizations are willing to stick it out.
During the invasion, nearly 700 embedded journalists traveled alongside the troops. Hundreds more entered the war zone independently from Kuwait and other bordering nations. Today, it is a much lonelier media scene.
In October, the AP reported that only 11 journalists were embedded and there had been no more than 25 embeds during the months before. When Tribune Media Services military columnist Joseph L. Galloway contacted the Combined Information Press Center in Baghdad in early January, he was told there were only nine embeds.
And no one expects anything to improve any time soon.
Not a single foreign editor or correspondent interviewed for this story felt conditions would get better. Most made bleak predictions of worse to come and talked about contingency plans for their staffs if conditions deteriorate even further. Some already have arranged for housing inside the heavily fortified Green Zone as a safety net.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/8/214939/7962Obstructed View
Extreme danger and sky-high security costs have diminished the press corps in Iraq and severely limited access to a deepening morass. The result is a clouded picture of perhaps today’s most important news story.
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4301
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