I can’t say I’m surprised by this report. Only NINE reporters are currently embedded with US forces in Iraq actually covering the War on Terror from the front lines. And four of the nine were reporters from Armed Forces news media.
Pajamas Media, in the course of a casual conversation with a Marine Corps information officer who tracks the number of embedded reporters in Iraq, learned the real number of embedded reporters covering the Iraq story on September 19, 2006. It was, according to the officer, a fairly typical day. To illustrate his point, he provided Pajamas Media with the illustration he uses to brief with on the state of media embedding in Iraq.
Here’s the chart (CLICK HERE TO VIEW) showing who the nine embedded reporters were covering all of Iraq on 9/19/2006. You’ll see that of those 9 reporters, 3 were from the Armed Forces’ Stars & Stripes, 1 from AFN (Armed Force Network), 1 from the Charlotte Observer, 1 from the BBC, 1 from the AP, 1 from RAI, and 1 from Polish Radio. All the rest of the “coverage” of the Iraq war on that day came from reporters hunkered down in the hotels and other locations under the rubric “Baghdad News Bureaus.”
The Charlotte Observer is the only American newspaper (local or national) that has reporters embedded in Iraq covering the real news. Where is the New York Times? USA Today? Washington Post? LA Times? Hiding in their hotel rooms in Baghdad.
No wonder we aren’t getting a full and truthful picture from Iraq. These “professional journalists” aren’t doing their jobs and are violating their public duty to give us the truth.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
“not embedded” does not, necessarily, mean “not out-and-about”.
It probably does, but…
And you are surprised, why??
Of course they aren’t doing their jobs for the American people. The Drive-By media’s primary allegiance is to the DNC…
Regards,
Peter H.
Gee Bruce, it would have been nice if you had provided a link to some article in the chralotte Observer suggesting that it’s covering the Iraq occupation in any way different from that of the rest of the US media. So I had to do some searching on my own at the paper’s website. Using the keyword “iraq”, my search turned up the following list of articles http://tinyurl.com/fwyrc Check it out and you’ll see happy headlines like “37 Shiites killed in bombing.” Indeed, their list looks depressingly like any other Iraq reporting these days. Of course, you stated that the Observer was “Covering Iraq Better Than Entire US Media” so I guess even you will have to admit that the situation in Iraq is dire.
How do you know a TV Reporter is ‘out & about”? They make a big deal out of it. Most of the reporting is stringers and then the talking head pretends it’s their story. I got the impression there was a backlash against embedded reporters once Baghdad fell: they were too close to the military and became biased. Since then very few reporters have been embedded and they rely on stringers. The question is why doesn’t the msm question the stringer’s bias?
Good question, Sandy. Let’s see if al-AP and al-Reuters can illustrate why they employ false and misleading techniques to get their respective points across….
I still think they get their marching orders from the RATS.
Regards,
Peter H.
Aside from the fact that the neutrality of “embedded reporters” has been called into question (they are too close to the units with which they are embedded to be particularly neutral–which was the purpose of the embedding, anyway) perhaps the phenomenon that you are seeing is one reason why others make use of foreign new services, such as Reuters (although that is not necessarily so foreign), AFP (Agance France Press), DPA (Deutsche Presse Agentur), and so forth.
I would expect the BBC to have a reporter in Iraq embedded with the few remaining British troops left there. Your article is not clear about this–chalk it up to bad writing by US news media–but, maybe the BBC has more reporters over there that are not embedded. I would also expect that RAI (Italian state news media) and Polish Radio would have reporters embedded with their troops, although RAI may well withdraw their embedded reporter as the Italians leave Iraq.
From the post
Where is the New York Times? USA Today? Washington Post? LA Times? Hiding in their hotel rooms in Baghdad.
Prove it. What is your evidence for that? Are you seriously assuming that the only way that news services can obtain information about what is going on in Iraq is by being embedded with US troops? That’s silly. How do you “think” that services such as Reuters, AFP, DPA, etc., get their information? Merely by listening to US military reports? Doubtful. If they did, per Dummy Rumsfeld they’d be reporting that Iraqi children were placing flowers in the guns of American tanks and cheering the American occupation.
/sarcasm
I think you make a great point, Bruce.
The journalists are missing in action. They can still fly to Turkey, come down into Kurdish controlled Iraq. They could go to Iran and interview terrorist camp followers in the west. They could access OBL in western Pakistan or speak to his buds-in-terror at the DNC… or, er, I mean Islamabad. Heck, when the GayLeftBorg asks “Why hasn’t Bush caught OBL” they imply everyone knows exactly where he is but are afraid or incompentent to pursue him… even though we’ve knocked out, killed and captured most of his extant command.
For those village idiots of the lower-case-clan who try to contend that “embedded” journalists are tainted or not independent, try telling that to one of their newest posterboys AndieCooper who just did a stint in the WOT abroad to help out al Jazerra in her latest “terrorists are real people, too” campaign. Not independent? Gheez, that’s like suggesting TeddieK isn’t drunk enough often enough.
To take a lower-case-clan truism like “prove it”… we can offer citations and certifiable demonstrative proofs til the cows come home and you’ll just take that and spin it to an absurd reduction, demand an immediate response to your latest off-shoot spinfestival or else it means we concede defeat and then hide for 3-4 days until readers forget the last round of your silly taunts and nonsense.
I’d encourage Bruce to ignore the lower-case-clan’s leader-in-chief about “proofs”. Truth has never been a province of the soxpuppet raj/Ian.
And let’s not forget Bilal Hussein, formerly employed with al-AP as a local photographer and is now a “security detainee” (that’s “prisoner” for you sockpuppets).
What? This happened? Why? This is stifling the freedom of speech! This is against the law! It’s all Bush’s fault!
Let’s clarify this for the libtards. This actually happened FIVE MONTHS AGO.
The al-AP honchos and colleagues just can’t understand why the military would want to hold a security detainee who was discovered by American troops in a Ramadi apartment with an alleged al-Qaeda leader and a weapons cache, and who tested positive for explosives residue.
Did I mention that this happened FIVE MONTHS AGO and it is just now coming to light?
Al-AP states that “U.S. journalists are severely limited in their ability to move safely, make themselves understood and develop sources in such areas. AP has learned to overcome those limitations, using techniques honed over decades of covering sectarian confrontation and bloodshed in the Middle East.”
Let me guess. “Techniques” such as turning a blind eye to widespread concern about the use of local stringers overseas? Or perhaps finely honed news-suppression techniques like those perfected by CNN during the Saddam regime? You know – “we won’t tell THE TRUTH if you let us have a Baghdad office.”
Eason Jordan of CNN must be offering the talking points to al-AP.
And you wonder why we don’t trust the media…
Regards,
Peter H.
Peter, about the same time that Sir David Frost was showing his true LeftLiberal colors by joining up with al Jazerra last May –after years of being the LeftLiberal media poster boy in the closet screamin’ he was unbiased– the other LeftLiberal icon Dan Rather courted pan-Arab media contacts to float the idea of Rather doing guest interviews with leading radical Islamo-terrorists… provided secret locations could be arranged per al Jazerra contacts into the terrorist underworld.
While those al Jazerra contacts were helpful in getting Rather into ScreaminHowieDean’s office, gaining entre into the terrorist underworld broke down when vundamental guarantees of DannieBoi’s personal safety couldn’t be made and that scuttled the gameplan. Which hurts; have these patriots no sense of duty anymore? I recall seeing old tapes of DannieBoi as a hard hitting, rough&ready newshound in VietNam decrying the count of body bags… US failures on the battlefield… rampant drug abuse among the troops… etc. All with flak jacket and helmet in place.
While I can understand al Jazerra having extensive contacts into the DNC, I can’t understand how a sterling patriot like Rather would worry about his personal safety in pursuit of the news… he is a newshound of the LeftLiberal clique, right?
They must be like their political leaders: cowards. And the followers of their leaders: cowards. It’s probably good we use a lower case “c” for coward since it fits most of the lower-case-clan here… where the yellow always runs.
I agree. Dan Rather and his ilk say these terrorists aren’t dangerous and don’t really want to kill Americans; let them prove it.
NDXXX, that sounds faintly like the raj/Ian Principle #11: “You must prove that what I say is not incontrovertible and if you don’t provide proof, then you concede it is –which is to say is not– credible. But in any case, I win the debate.”
Um, or something like that. I always have trouble following the logic of those idiots.
They employ logic?
Regards,
Peter H.
LOL
Well, the Charlotte Observer has its moonbats too, I’m afraid.
With the release of Bill O’Reilly’s new book “Culture Warrior,” the MSM vultures are circling. Writing in the Charlotte Observer, Kay McSpadden says that O’Reilly is “responsible” for the culture war in the first place.
And what about people like Ken Olbermann, Donny Deutsch and Chris Matthews? Aren’t they just as much at fault?
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Regards,
Peter H.
Sorry – in the above posting, I meant to say “Keith” Olbermann.
I couldn’t stand him on ESPN, and I can’t stand him now on PMSNBC.
Regards,
Peter H.
#8 Michigan-Matt — September 25, 2006 @ 1:15 pm – September 25, 2006
Why, thank you, Matty, for the geography lesson. Indeed, indie journalists could also fly to Damascus, Syria, to Amman Jordan, to Riyahd, Saudi Arabia, to somewhere in Iran (not necessarily Teheran) and directly enter Iraq from there. What leads you to believe that some haven’t?
On your larger point,
For those village idiots of the lower-case-clan who try to contend that “embedded” journalists are tainted or not independent…
of course embedded “journalists” are tainted, and they are not independent. They are selected by the US military for their loyalty to the line that the US military wants to maintain, and that is why the US military allows them to be embedded.
I recognize that you Mighty Righties are adverse to actually looking at sources, but, I’ll merely put these out for those who might have less closed minds that the MR faction:
FREE RIDE
The Disease of Journalism
There are a number of other articles available that confirm that the US military’s “embedding” program was intended to sway coverage of the war on Iraq by US media outlets.
of course embedded “journalists” are tainted, and they are not independent. They are selected by the US military for their loyalty to the line that the US military wants to maintain, and that is why the US military allows them to be embedded.
Well, of course; you don’t want people who will give away information to the enemy.
What sockpuppet RajIan is whining about is the fact that he and his fellow leftists, who want American troops to suffer a “million Mogadishus”, aren’t allowed to embed THEIR journalists, who not only see nothing wrong with giving information to the enemy, but are actually encouraged to do it.
RajIan’s own article points out that hate bias that he and his fellow leftists have. They opposed showing the bodies of mutilated American troops because it demonstrated that the terrorists and insurgents they supported are not the peace-loving folk they try to paint them as being. They openly blocked adverse coverage of Saddam Hussein’s regime, as Eason Jordan admitted, because it didn’t fit what they wanted to portray.
In short, they don’t want FREEDOM of the press or journalistic standards; they merely want excuses to wage their hate war against Americans and American soldiers, and to pervert the freedoms we have and the standards we keep to their ends, just like the terrorists do with the Geneva conventions.