Bad News in Iraq

I got an email from my cousin touting some good news from Iraq, a commendation for a civilian who has helped to add infrastructure to the country. She added that "we never hear good news" like this, and so she wanted to spread it around.

We hear a lot about this, that there is a bias toward bad news. Well, this is true of journalism: "If it bleeds, it leads." On my local news I rarely hear about a theatre company finding a new space or a church group feeding the homeless. It always seems to be one story after another about murders and car accidents, even though I live in a safe community. And we hear more about police officers shooting suspects than we do about them getting kittens out of trees, even though I believe on the whole they are honorable people.

And I don't think that we as a people have a grasp at how awful it is to live in Iraq. We in our cushy American lives can't conceive of the difficulty. It's hard enough to live under the threat of kidnappings and rapes and murders, armed militias and coalition forces barging into your homes day and night, and roadside IEDs-- but try doing it with electricity cutting on and off, schools and work opening and closing, no sewer, running water, or garbage pickup. If you really want to know-- and if you have the conscience God gave you YOU SHOULD-- check out the link to the wonderful Baghdad Burning, a blog written by an average person living in Iraq. (I put the link in the sidebar on the right.)

Humor can be an excellent lens-- to get an idea of what it's like to live in Iraq, check out some April Fool's Joke ideas from Baghdad Burning's author (handle: riverbend):

1. “Guess what?! There’s going to be electricity this summer!!!” (For better effect, it is suggested a candle be broken in half and thrown high into the air with a whoop.)

2. “Guess what?! The Americans have declared they will be gone by 2010 and they won’t leave permanent bases behind!!!” (This should be said with a straight face.)

3. “Guess what?! They didn’t actually find three corpses in the strip of trees two streets away!!!”

4. “Guess what?! The Puppets finally formed a government!!!”

5. “Guess what?! They didn’t actually detain [fill in with the name of a relative, friend- everyone knows someone in prison these days]!!!”

6. "Guess what?! Chalabi solved the gasoline crisis!!!"

7. "Guess what?! No more religious militias- they've been banned from the country!!!" (This should be said in a low voice - just in case)

8. "Great news!! The US is going to make public how the billions of dollars in Iraqi oil money AND donations were 'spent'!!!"

9. "Guess what?! They're going to actually begin reconstructing the country and they estimate it will take 5 years!!!"

10. "Guess what?! They caught Zarqawi!!!" (This will only work on Iraqis who actually think he exists.)

I don't think we can talk enough about how awful the living conditions are in Iraq, because even as much as we talk about it, I don't think we as Americans can grasp it without going there.

And then on CNN's On The Story* a correspondent was answering the question about why she doesn't report more good news. She said that part of the problem, beyond the difficulty of getting around and security issues, is that the Defense Department will often specifically ask them NOT to report good news. Got a power plant up and running? If you report it, the "bad guys" (of whatever ilk) will bomb it. Got a school open? If you talk about it, they'll shoot it up and kill the children.

ABC's overnight news coverage was doing a story about a sitcom being filmed for Iraqi TV-- which was of course about a hapless George Constanza-type who can't get the girl, because that is universal-- and while they were filming the story, the head of the entertainment division for the Iraqi network had been murdered. Even attempts at happy stories turn bloody in reporting this war. (The online version of this story is here.)

I was trying to track down the CNN quotes from above and instead found an article entitled, Baghdad: Where No One Is Safe.

"Who do you trust in your neighborhood?" [correspondent Cal Perry] asked a resident of Baghdad.

"No one," he said.

"Who secures your house, your family?" [Perry] asked.

"I do. My brother lives downstairs. We have weapons. We are always in touch on the phone; we have codes," he said.

He then added, "It will get worse -- everyone knows this."

Mr. Perry went on to say, "Bodies are found every day, all over Baghdad. Dozens. Sometimes scores. Some are bound, tortured and beheaded. Others are simply shot, execution-style. The spiral continues, and no one knows what the sunrise in Baghdad will bring tomorrow, next week or next month."

So don't blame a biased media for not reporting the happy news, there truly isn't very much, and what there is they're afraid to report on for fear it could be taken away. Do some exploration beyond the daily body count and understand what is really going on there. And then you too might be shouting from the rooftops, demanding to know how our great country let this happen, and what we are going to do to fix it.

*I can't find the transcript, I can't remember the date. This is the kind of sloppy research that bloggers get nailed with all the time, and I can only say, sorry, I wasn't actively blogging when I saw this, and I watch a LOT of CNN and it's easy to get it confused. And I really wish I could find the name of the correspondent in Baghdad, she's got long blond hair and as I recall a British accent. Now that I'm posting more often and more seriously, I'll try to get better about these things.

UPDATE: CNN has started a weekend show called "Iraq: This Week in War" (or something like that, it hasn't appeared on their web site yet as far as I can see) and part of their programming is checking in on the good news, including power plants, schools, etc. It's a sad little section, it almost seems like if you tell the good news it sounds so meager it emphasizes how bad things are. But at least they are trying to "balance" their coverage.