Fornits
General Interest => Tacitus' Realm => Topic started by: Deborah on March 24, 2006, 07:32:00 PM
-
White House says Reporters not telling the "good" news
In order to try to win more support for the Iraq War, Cheney defended some of his statements made earlier on Meet the Press this week end. Here's a report on that:
"Mr. Cheney was challenged on "Face the Nation" about his statement three years ago that "we will be greeted as liberators" and his assertion 10 months ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes."
He insisted that in both cases his facts were right, but that the news media had created a different perception with vivid imagery of killing.
"I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad," he said."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/polit ... ef=slogin' (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/politics/20war.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1142830800&en=f3c0c5b8c7ee2700&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin')
Several conservative pundits pushed the idea that reporters only report the bad news in Iraq and that actually things are going quite well there. Unfortunately, none of these reporters had actually been to Iraq. So I thought maybe we should try to find a reporters who had actually been there to see if we could talk them into telling the good news rather than report only the isolated incidents where things are going badly.
Bob Woodruff, can't give the report yet because he is still recovering from serious injuries sustained when the tank he was riding in hit an IED.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Woodruff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Woodruff)
Jawad Khathem, couldn't do it either because he was paralyzed from the waist down after a kidnap attempt in Iraq. Another reporter who was with him and two cameramen died in the attempt.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/ ... ts.killed/ (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/23/journalists.killed/)
David L. Roustrum, University of Buffalo Reporter, not available to provide good news from Iraq because a rocket propelled grenade hit his Humvee and killed him in December 2004.
http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol36/v ... ldier.html (http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol36/vol36n13/articles/StudentSoldier.html)
French Reporter Frederic Nerac, not available, he was killed by US fire.
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelli ... 1946-6040r (http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051020-081946-6040r)
Arab Reporter, Mazen al-Tumeizi, also, unavailable for comment. He was killed when US helicopter killed him and 11 civilians as they were standing near a humvee that had been hit by insurgents.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/ ... click=true (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/13/1094927505748.html?oneclick=true)
Terry Loyd also is unavailable for comment. He died hit with friendly fire.
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1093.shtml (http://electroniciraq.net/news/1093.shtml)
Jill Carroll is unavailable because she is currently being held hostage.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02078.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010902078.html)
Steven Vincent also can't help. He was taken hostage and killed in Iraq.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0804/p01s03-woiq.html (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0804/p01s03-woiq.html)
Rory Carroll (no relation to Jill) really didn't feel like talking about how good things were after he was kidnapped and released.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 366406.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4366406.stm)
Daniel Pearl also couldn't comment; he also was kidnapped. Instead of being released, he was beheaded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pearl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pearl)
Is Michael Kelly available? No, this reporter died in a humvee in Iraq.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/artic ... 4kelly.htm (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/030414/14kelly.htm)
We tried to see if some these reporters were available, but unfortunately, they all died in military action in Iraq also: Tareq Ayyub, Joe Causo, Kaveh Golestan, Christian Liebig, Paul Moran, Kamaran Muhamed, Elizabeth Neuffer, Julio Parrado, and Taras Protsyuk.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/3/iraq-obits.asp (http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/3/iraq-obits.asp)
After being there six months, perhaps Dennis O'Brien could enlighten us. But no, his experience there was so horrible that he killed himself upon his return.
http://www.duckdaotsu.org/dennis_Obrien.html (http://www.duckdaotsu.org/dennis_Obrien.html)
Judy Woodruff (no relation to Bob) saved me the trouble of finding the names of each, "unavailable" reporter, when, about a year ago, she related that 78 reporters have died in Iraq.
http://www.newseum.org/newseum/aboutthe ... cation.htm (http://www.newseum.org/newseum/aboutthenewseum/memorialrededication.htm)
More have died since then. This morning on Good Morning America, it was reported that 86 reporters have died in Iraq.
I GOT AN IDEA! Let's send Limbaugh, Coulter, O'Reilly, and Hannity into the Sunni Triangle so they can report first hand how much Iraq has improved since we have liberated them. Surely they would jump at the chance to show up those liberal liars who didn't have the bad luck of dying there.
-
Great Idea! Why not just base Fox News in Baghdad? Then they can find out just how great life is there. They will have to give everybody huge raises to finance the exorbitant taxi rates. Seems the taxi drivers dont't like the risk much.
There *are* a lot of good things being done. The sad truth is that there are so many more BAD things happening. If the righties want more good news coverage, they need the number of good acts to at least equal the bad. Right now, it isn't even close.People in Baghdad speak about how they had electricity and water when Saddam ran the show, and that matters quite a bit to the locals. It is like the wild west there, according to many reporters and visitors. If Americans want to find out how bad it really is, they need to see more news sources- or else they can continue to bury their heads in the sand and claim that all foreign journalists, and almost all USA ones are liars.
Along with Fox news, lets send the Bush Admin there, in exile. Rumsfeld can then prove he really does know where the WMD are, as he has stated. And Cheney needs a good up close view as well. Hope he is better with automatic weapons than shotguns!
-
This war has been the most dangerous ever for correspondents. Maybe that is why they are not so thrilled about it - as you noted
-
Well, I'll be damned! none of those pundits you mentioned served in the Armed Forces!
http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html (http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html)
-
Know what makes me want to just give up and throw in the towel? When some dumb arsed joker makes some comment in passing about how backward and ignorant the Arab world is and how much we'll be helping them just by getting them educated.
Why do you think they're going after the journalists? Cause, at the end of the day, that's the most effective way to deliver the message w/o harming any more real live humans than absolutely necessary.
These people had literature, physics, mathematics and art centuries before Europeans started toying with the idea of scribbling a device very like a signature here and there.
They know what they're doing. If you must hate them, hate them for what they are, not for what the idiot Büsh kid and his lackeys imagine them to be.
One does not have to appeal to God to set the initial conditions for the creation of the universe, but if one does He would have to act through the laws of physics.
--Stephen Hawking, English scientist
_________________
fka ~ Antigen
Drug war POW
Straight, Sarasota
`80 - `82
return undef() if /coercion/i;[ This Message was edited by: Eudora on 2006-03-26 19:30 ]
-
exactly! and most Americans seem completely in the dark that Iraq had more women in high postions and in the workforce, than any other Arab nation. That's all over now - women aren't even safe on the streets most of the time. I suspect more Iraqis read world news than US citizens, per capita. Sure sounds like it when they interview people on street there
-
The Iraqi people will be glad when we get through liberating them. Looking at these figures I bet the Iranian people are hoping we don't liberate them next
Figures released by IBC today, updated by statistics for the year 2005 from the main Baghdad morgue, show that the total number of civilians reported killed has risen year-on-year since May 1st 2003 (the date that President Bush announced ?major combat operations have ended?):
? 6,331 from 1st May 2003 to the first anniversary of the invasion, 19th March 2004 (324 days: Year 1)
? 11,312 from 20th March 2004 to 19th March 2005 (365 days: Year 2)
? 12,617 from 20th March 2005 to 1st March 2006 (346 days: Year 3).
In terms of average violent deaths per day this represents:
? 20 per day in Year 1
? 31 per day in Year 2 and
? 36 per day in Year 3.
-
yes, but look at the good news: more civilians die all the time, so civilian killing is becoming more efficient under our "watch".
Even better, more die per day than did under the Saddam. Proof the new "Iraqi Democracy" works better!