The Independent: "Hotel Journalism" Gives American Troops A Free Hand

[rainbow4321]

Guess they are OK with trying to convince us the war is a good thing..they just don't want to go out and be in the middle of it? So they hire some Iraqis to out and get the stories (yeah, let THEM get killed). Maybe if someone threw the actual reporters OUT of their hotel suites they might be a little more willing to tell the truth and expose shrub's war lies so this will END sooner rather than later...

Using link below cuz the direct one to The Independent you have to $$ for??

http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-fisk180105.htm


"Hotel journalism" is the only way to describe it. More and more, Western reporters in Baghdad are reporting from their hotels rather than the streets of Iraq's towns and cities.

Most use Iraqi "stringers" - part-time correspondents who risk their lives to conduct interviews for American or British journalists - and none can contemplate a journey outside the capital without days of preparation, unless they "embed" themselves with US or British forces.


"The US military couldn't be happier with this situation," a longtime American correspondent in Baghdad says. "They know that if they bomb a house of innocent people, they can claim it was a 'terrorist' base and get away with it. They don't want us roaming around Iraq, and so the 'terrorist' threat is great news for them. They can claim they've shot 600 or 1 000 insurgents and we have no way of checking because we can't go to the cemetery or visit the hospitals - because we don't want to get kidnapped and have our throats cut."

Thus many reporters are now reduced to telephoning the American military or the Iraqi "interim" government for information from their hotel rooms, receiving "facts" from men and women who are even more isolated from Iraq in the Baghdad Green Zone around Saddam's former palace than are the journalists. Or they take reports from their correspondents "embedded" with American troops and who will, necessarily, get only the American side of the story.