For the Press, No Iraq Introspection (Mitchell / MoJo)

[struggle4progress]

On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, the media reexamined just about everything — except for themselves.
By Greg Mitchell
March 28, 2008

... Yes, the fateful media mistakes and misreporting of Iraqi WMD before the war have been widely covered in the past, but how could this not be widely revisited at the fifth-year mark, with 4,000 American soldiers dead and thousands wounded for life? What about the media’s role in falling victim to official propaganda in the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman cases? The delay in exposing the abuses at Abu Ghraib and attacks on civilians in Haditha and numerous other places?

The list goes on: Why did it take years to really focus on ill treatment of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans back here at home? To expose the rising suicide rate among soldiers and vets? To assess the full financial costs of the war? Why did the media go along with the Pentagon’s ban on showing coffins returning from Iraq, and the restrictions on running pictures of dead or injured American soldiers — thus preventing the public from absorbing the true costs of the war? On reflection, what were the strengths and weaknesses of the much-ballyhooed "embedded" journalists plan?

What about the reluctance of editorial pages and pundits to propose, even tentatively, a real change in course in Iraq, as month after month, and then year after year, passed? Almost four years went by before a major newspaper called for the beginning of even a very slow, phased withdrawal. What do they think of that delay—now?

And in recent months, why are there so few reporters covering the war now? Are budgetary excuses — and blaming readers for not being much interested anymore — really valid? Do readers take their cues from the (increasingly disinterested) media? ...

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2008/03/press-and-iraq-five-years-later.html