A new column by artist Steve Mumford is up, and, as usual, he paints a picture of Iraq that is quite different from that which we’ve been seeing in the media. Like his other Baghdad Journal entries, he doesn’t downplay the problems, to be sure, but neither does he overplay them and he will actually talk about good things that are happening in Iraq. It makes for refreshingly balanced reading. Read the whole thing…
Trying to measure the success or failure of the occupation is like the proverbial group of blind men attempting to describe an elephant: each person tends to see the war and its aftermath differently, through the prism of their own ideology and experience. Some people talk about the children who died as a result of the sanctions, some talk about the thousands of Iraqis murdered by Saddam.
Watching the BBC here in Baghdad, I get the impression that the war has left a state of worsening chaos throughout the country. Walking through the streets I often have the opposite feeling. Then a bomb goes off somewhere and I brace myself for worse times ahead.
If only the media could get it right. Speaking of which, Glenn Reynolds has an interesting roundup of letters from non-journalists, which again paint a picture that is very different from the one we’re getting from the media. On his blog, he even points out a valid criticism of his approach:
A more valid criticism of my posts would be that they’re anecdotal, and don’t show the big picture. That’s true — and as Daniel Drezner has noted, there may not be a coherent single narrative on Iraq right now.
But that, of course, is my point. The Big Media have created a coherent single narrative (call it Vietnam II: Reloaded) and they’re engaged in selective reporting to maintain that narrative…
Anecdotal or not, you’d think we’d be hearing more about them from the media, instead of our buddies coming back and asking us what in the hell is going on with the news…
I meant to write more, but I’m out of time and I’ll be sippin by the river this afternoon, so I probably won’t be in any condition to revise this later on…
Update – Lex beat me to it…
Update 9.22.03 – I’m still recovering from the sippin by the river extravaganza, but Glenn Reynolds has a good follow up piece at MSNBC. Also of note is a recent Michael Barone article which laments:
Today’s media have a zero-defect standard: the Bush administration should have anticipated every eventuality and made detailed plans for every contingency. This is silly. A good second-grade teacher arrives in class with a lesson plan but adapts and adjusts to pupils’ responses and the classroom atmosphere. A good occupying power does the same thing.
This isn’t the first time that the media’s “zero-defect standard” has come into play, even with respect to Iraq. Does anyone remember the third day of war? After two days of amazing success, we slowed down for a moment (ostensibly to let our troops rest, revise our plans, and allow air power to pave the way) and the media proclaimed that the war had suddenly gone wrong!