The Columbia Journalism Review claims that after years of openness that benefited both the military and the media in Iraq, the media is being shut out .
The article is extraordinary not just for what it says but most importantly for what it refuses to say. The blame for the media blackout is placed on the public affairs officers, the financial crisis, an apathetic public—everything but the obvious Change that occurred earlier this year. Consider these sentences:
Ah, the happy world of Iraq, as seen through U.S. military press releases. Iraq could be exploding—in fact, parts of it still regularly are—but the press-release view would still be that of policemen graduating, officials cutting ribbons, and grateful citizens leading security forces and their U.S. advisers to weapons caches . . . .The regular background briefings and press conferences that once helped put the ongoing violence into context are so last year . . . .
This wasn’t the case a short time ago. From early 2007 to late 2008, when Colonel Steven Boylan . . . his job was to lay down a more realistic scenario for the American public . . . .
That effort to court the media seems extraordinary now . . .
Mostly they’ve retreated into non-communicativeness, and worse . . . .
Reporters asking to cover specific missions are directed to ribbon cuttings . . . .
The U.S. still has perhaps the most transparent military in the world. Almost no other country allows the kind of scrutiny on the ground that the U.S. allows reporters during combat operations. Yet a confluence of factors—relief that Iraq is out of the news, the reality that the U.S. is taking a back seat, and the press-averse commanders who are no longer being required to engage with the media—has had the same effect . . . .
Journalists in Iraq cherish the memory of embed invitations from the days when the military was courting the media. They seem like quaint anachronisms today . . . .
. . . “The embed process for the most part is dead.” . . .
Some officials say the war is over. It isn’t. It is a different war and a much different story—one that Americans are being encouraged to forget.
Did you see what is missing? The One name that isn’t mentioned at all? O’ I bet you did . . .
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