USC Center on Public Diplomacy | Washington Journal

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Published: AUG 25, 2005 - 3:42PM PST

Washington Journal
Editor-in-Chief Adam Clayton Powell, III writes on public diplomacy, politics and more from in and around Washington, D.C.

PRIORITY FOR KAREN HUGHES: GET REPORTERS OUT OF BAGHDAD
AUG 25, 2005 - 3:42PM PST
by Adam Clayton Powell III

As Karen Hughes begins to settle into her new office, she must see that one priority for U.S. public diplomacy is to get reporters out of Baghdad. No, not get reporters out of Iraq: Just get them out of their bureaus in the capital. The consensus of U.S. journalists in Baghdad is that it is just too dangerous to get out into the countryside, where they could report on what is happening - good and bad. But reporting what is happening - good and bad - should provide the world with a more complete picture of what the U.S. is doing in Iraq. So it should be a goal of American policy. Right now, the most memorable pictures from around the country come from video cameramen embedded with (or members of) the insurgency, showing bombings, beheadings and other anti-U.S. attacks of the day. The insurgents have grasped the power of the photograph, while U.S. media have largely abandoned the field, because it is too dangerous And that danger is real, cannot be ignored and must be addressed. It has been the subject of frequent dispatches over the summer, from stories by reporters including Joe Cochrane of Newsweek to the angry memo from Hannah Allam, Knight Ridder’s Baghdad bureau chief - promptly reprinted in Jim Romenesko’s widely read column - about the danger even of going to the store to buy bottled water. “The main obstacle we face is the severe limitation on our movement and our ability to get out and report,” said Mike Silverman, managing editor of the Associated Press, in an interview with the New York Times. “It's very confining for our staff to go into Baghdad and have to spend most of their time on the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel." That concern was the starting point for a review of Iraq coverage by the Associated Press Managing Editors board. The APME discussion was especially important because of the power of the Associated Press: Much less familiar to the public than TV networks or national magazines, the AP, with a Baghdad staff of more than 70, is the most widely used source of Iraq coverage for newspapers and broadcasters, local and national, in the U.S. and in much of the world. “Some editors expressed concern,” wrote reporter Katharine Seelye in the New York Times, “that a kind of bunker mentality was preventing reporters in Iraq from getting out and explaining the bigger picture beyond the daily death tolls.” One member of the AP board expressing concern was Rosemary Goudreau, editorial page editor of the Tampa Tribune. Following the meeting she wrote a lengthy column describing the AP meeting. She also discussed the divergence of journalists’ daily reporting from accounts brought back by relatives of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have served in the military and in civilian jobs in Iraq, and she quoted one of her fellow editors in the AP meeting. "Troops coming home are telling their friends - they're saying there's progress…... FULL TEXT