by Charles
Michael Yon has been doing yeoman's work with the on-the-ground entries of his experiences in Iraq. He is highly perceptive and adept at writing what he sees. In his Embed post, this paragraph leapt out:
So there were two tired Danish TV2 journalists, the American TV man, and me, all sleeping on cots in the CPIC office. It's easy to take shots at "the media" in Iraq—literally, as well as for the quality of their coverage. Forget for a moment the lopsided expense versus returns ratio. The bullet holes in the hotel rooms and the picnic tables in the desert tell a back story about why so few journalists make the journey. All this, while knowing that insurgents have specifically targeted members of the media.
Apparently the terrorists like it better when fewer reporters are around to peel back the layers of their insurgent press machine and reveal its rotten core. The Americans may think they get bad press, but apparently the terrorists think they get worse. Everybody, it seems, is a victim of bad press, including (ironically) the professionals who print it, because they get shot by everybody, with words and bullets.
Emphasis mine. This was a bit of a surprise because I didn't think that journalists were primary targets for terrorists and Sunni paramilitary shock troops. However, Yon's words were confirmed a couple of days ago when terrorists tried to hit the Palestine Hotel, a deplorable act for which al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility. Why such a direct attack against media members? Donald Sensing:
Al Qaeda sees the media, especially the Western media, as their enemy. It may be (and we may never know) that they believed that by striking the Palestine Hotel and injuring or killing reporters they would accomplish a couple of things positive for their side.
One would have been to greatly reduce the number of Western media representatives in Iraq. Once reporters had deliberately been murdered by al Qaeda, there would may have been a strong exodus of reporters from the country. There may yet be a number of reporters who choose to leave because of the bombings. In al Qaeda's view, the news from Iraq is bad - bad for them. As I have explained a number of times before, al Qaeda, from bin Laden on down, see the Muslim ummah as their natural allies. If the corrupting influences of Western media are reduced or better yet, eliminated, then the ummah will no longer waver in support of the Islamist cause. Zawahiri admitted they are in a battle for hearts and minds, but he believes that the ummah's hearts and minds are his to lose. So while the intended target of violence may have been reporters, the intended audience was the Muslim masses, especially those of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria, three strongholds of al Qaeda support.
At the same time, Zarqawi may have thought (not unreasonably) that once they managed to kill reporters inside the reporters' own safe haven, reportage would have turned immediately and strongly against the US and Iraqi governments. Claims of "Iraq the quagmire" would have been promulgated even harder and media commentary would have lambasted the inability of the authorities to maintain security.
Zawahiri himself wrote that much of the War Against Militant Islamists is to be fought in the media. Time will tell whether or how this attack will seep into the psyches of the journalists who laid their heads in the Palestine Hotel.
Going back to Yon, his Embed entry showed hard it was to get embedded into U.S. military operations, and it also explains why the accounts of on-the-ground troops differ so dramatically from reporters who stick around the hotel and sit in on press briefings. Embedding is time-consuming, expensive and deadline-killing, leaving most editors to conclude that the costs outweigh the benefits. This is a travesty because, while Russert may indeed be right when he says that the mainstream media is reporting the truth in Iraq, they're reporting just what they see, and what they see is a small slice of the whole truth since so few actually go outside the compound.
This is another area where the American government is doing a piss-poor job. The military should be streamlining the embed process, and if they can't do that, they should be paying journalists a stipend to help defray the costs of this important function. How much better off we'd be if Bill Roggio didn't have to shill for sheckels to cover his upcoming embed assignment with a group of Marines. Because terrorists are fully engaged in this media war, the way to win is not to have journalists go home, but to make it easier to bring thousands more in.
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