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| Iraq |
| Embedded reporter: "Everything I thought I knew was wrong." |
| 2005-12-15 |
| A reporter from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner is embedded with the 173rd Stryker Brigade, and is blogging her experiences on the newspaper's website. Iâm a journalist. I read the news everyday, from several sources. I have the luxury of reading stuff newspapers donât always have room to print. I read every tidbit I could on Iraq and the war before coming. Everything I thought I knew was wrong. Maybe not wrong, but certainly different than the picture in my head. . . . There are houses of this city that by Fairbanks standards are luxurious. Or at least they were at one time. They are ornate and gated and in neighborhoods with schools, stores and mosques. They are also ghosts of what they once were. They are still lived in, but after years of war and lack of many basic municipal services, the houses look spent and tired around the shutters. There is garbage on the streets, in yards, in open areas. There is a stench. There is grime. But there are also people. They are vivid, unlike their surroundings. They are excitable and friendly and conversational. They live in conditions I hope I donât have to experience in my own life. Yet, if my neighborhood saw two wars, the breakdown of the national and local governments and decline of municipal services, Iâm not sure I wouldnât be in the same boat. still havenât seen U.S. troops engaged or encounter car bombs or explosives. But I did see them play backgammon with some local police and Iraqi soldiers. I saw them take photos with more locals and make jokes mostly lost in translation. They gave advice and expertise to local troops on how to conduct a neighborhood patrol. They drank the local customary tea, and many admitted theyâve become addicted to it. They know several locals by name. I didnât hear one slight or ridicule of a very distinct culture. One soldier mentioned it might be a good idea to clean up the trash around one polling place, and another commented on the status of women in the culture, but they were nothing but respectful, friendly and buddy-buddy with the Iraqis they mingled with today. And this is good stuff. More than anything in the last few days Iâve heard from soldiers and commanders that people back home donât quite get it. They donât see the real picture. They donât get the real story. Some of them, like Lt. Col. Gregg Parrish, look seriously pained in the face when he says only a part of the picture is being told; the part of car bombs and explosives and suicide bombers and death. Itâs a necessary part of the picture, but not a complete one, he says. Iâve listened to the soldiers and Parrish about the missing pieces of the puzzles that donât reach home. My selfish, journalistic drive immediately thinks âPerfect. A story that hasnât been told. Let me at it.â But I have a slight hesitation; I need to keep balanced. I canât be a cheerleader, even if I have a soft spot for the hometown troops, especially after the welcome theyâve shown me. I still need to be truthful and walk the centerline and report the good or bad. But then I realize itâs not a conflict of interest. If I am truly unbiased, then I need to get used to this one simple fact; that the untold story, might in fact, be a positive one. It takes a minute to wrap my mind around it, as a news junkie that became a news writer. The great, career-making, breaking news stories usually donât have happy endings; they usually revolve around disturbing news, deceit and downfall. Nasty political doings. Gruesome crimes and murders. Revealing secrets. But Iâve come upon something that is none of those. Not this aspect of it. There are politics to this war and controversies and investigations. But there is another side. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #12 Flambeau's been out of biz for years. It sure has. Crashed on debt bt also taken down due to excessive leftist ideological bias. |
| Posted by: The Happy Fliegerabwehrkanonen 2005-12-15 23:40 |
| #11 Flambeau's been out of biz for years. |
| Posted by: Lurker 2005-12-15 17:28 |
| #10 The Colorado Springs Gazette publishes a piece from one of the Fort Carson soldiers serving in Iraq every Wednesday. Some of the stories are pretty good, some aren't, but at least the local people are getting a glimpse of what life is like there. Being a military town, most people here are less inclined to believe the leftist spin, but it's good to have such stories to quiet the whine of the sob-sisters from Colorado College (a VERY liberal private school) and the US Olympic Training Center, a bastion of moonbatism. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2005-12-15 17:27 |
| #9 "...the untold story, might in fact, be a positive one." Wow. The understated fact of the century. I watched Senators Dingy Harry, Smuck Schumer, and a couple of other P.O.O.P.ers (Party of Obscenely Obsessive Pessimists, formerly known as Democrats) bemoan the economy, Valerie Plame, and so forth. There's a reporter over at the Atlanta Journal Constitution who is a life-long leftist and Third World socialist sympathizer. She attended FSU and participated in every major left-wing campus organization before plying her poison on the pages of the off-campus leftist rag, the Florida Flambeau. I bet any amount of money, she'll tilt coverage towards the negative. "Over the last 10 weeks, I got the chance to make new friends and perhaps, even a few enemies who didnât care for the images and thoughts in the stories I filed for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution."--Moni Basu A number of soldiers blasted her. If only they knew her as well as I do, and if only they were aware of her leftist-bias, they would never have given her the time of day. One person commented on her AJC blog: By oconee September 28, 2005 08:56 PM | Link to this ⦠I am glad she was able to complete her a* without any harm coming to her and welcome her back to the good old US. I only wish all of our heroes over there would be as lucky as she was but now, please, give us someone to write the blog without a lean to the left. See here: Seditious Voice |
| Posted by: The Happy Fliegerabwehrkanonen 2005-12-15 15:57 |
| #8 Good for her. It's painful to have your entire worldview stripped away and stood on its head. Also, she may never work in journalism or academia again when she gets back; the ideologues will blacklist her. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-12-15 15:14 |
| #7 What do you want, a f*cking medal for figuring out what was glaringly obvious from the beginning? Four years, it took you. Now you're embedded with our troops, which means we should get a decent report from you around, say, December 2009. ESAD, you ignorant tool. |
| Posted by: BH 2005-12-15 15:09 |
| #6 Everything I thought I knew was wrong. That's why you're paid not to think, but to report. ..the untold story, might in fact, be a positive one. Which makes it news. Not the kind that everyone else is falling all over themselves to get into print, but news nonetheless. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-12-15 14:59 |
#5 If I am truly unbiased, then I need to get used to this one simple fact; that the untold story, might in fact, be a positive one.Well, that certainly leave out the vast majority of the (totally biased) MSM. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-12-15 14:46 |
| #4 The great, career-making, breaking news stories usually donât have happy endings; they usually revolve around disturbing news, deceit and downfall. Nasty political doings. Gruesome crimes and murders. Revealing secrets. ..because that's how you've defined it; leaving us, the consumer, to seek alternative venues of information more representative of the TRUTH. |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2005-12-15 13:49 |
| #3 Is it really any different from local news? If I went to any major city and listened only to the first seven to ten minutes of the local listings of murder, rape, robbery, assault, vehicular homicide, would I even consider living or raising a family there? Entertainment is done on the cheap and easy. If it bleeds it leads. That's why selling good news is so hard and the culture of the media doesn't do hard. hack (hak) n. 1) a mediocre and disdained writer (see, Krugman, Paul; Dowd, Maureen; et al) 2) machine politician: a politician who belongs to a small clique that controls a political party for private rather than public ends (see, Pelosi, Nancy; et al) |
| Posted by: Whiling Graick3509 2005-12-15 13:46 |
| #2 Glad to see someone looking at the war as it should be. Now if we can just get this bright light into mainstream media. |
| Posted by: 49 pan 2005-12-15 13:24 |
| #1 The Fairbanks Daily News Miner. Not quite the main stream. Our even smaller local daily had an employee called up for the reserves who reported while over there. It was good Ernie Pyle type reporting on the daily life of a soldier with occasional think pieces that were very balanced. No one at the paper changed their left wing slant as a result. But it was good to see that at least one of them could go over with a sufficiently open mind to see reality, warts included, instead of having the default MSM Iraq is going to hell story line. More of these locals should get attention from the WH. Bush should have a press conference with all the questions coming from people like this instead of the MoDo wannabes in the WH press corps. |
| Posted by: Thong Slort2612 2005-12-15 13:17 |