With O'Hanlon and Pollack, media neglected to ask about military protection & control of itinerary

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http://mediamatters.org/items/200708010013?f=h_top

With O'Hanlon and Pollack, media once again neglect to ask about military protection and control of Iraq itinerary
On July 30 and the morning of July 31, the co-authors of the July 30 New York Times op-ed "A War We Just Might Win," Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, appeared on six live television news programs to discuss their conclusion that "e are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms." O'Hanlon and Pollack wrote that they had recently returned from Iraq, where they "spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel." But only one interviewer, CNN's Wolf Blitzer, asked either O'Hanlon or Pollack about the circumstances of their visit. Blitzer asked, "id you have the freedom to say, 'I want to go here, I want to go there'? Who organized, in other words, the stopovers, the visits that you were having?" Pollack responded that the trip "was largely organized by the military." In other words, Pollack and O'Hanlon "largely" saw what the military wanted them to see. On several previous occasions, the media have similarly reported on public figures who have visited Iraq and cited progress on security matters without reporting whether those figures were allowed to choose the locations they visited, if their trips were organized by the military, or the extent of the protection they received during their trip.

Media outlets have failed to ask O'Hanlon, Pollack, and other visitors to Iraq about whether they had military escorts -- and the extent to which the military chose the sites that they visited -- even after the media uncritically reported that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) touted the military's purported success in making a Baghdad market safer. On April 1, McCain, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC), and Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN) and Rick Renzi (R-AZ) visited Baghdad's Shorja market under heavy guard. Shortly thereafter, McCain asserted that "things are getting better in Iraq," and Graham argued that "{i}t will be a huge mistake to set a deadline. It (the U.S. troop surge) is working." Pence said the market "was 'like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summer time.' " While April 1 reports by The Washington Post and the Associated Press described the delegation's walk through the market as "heavily guarded," an April 2 online article from The Hill did not report the security measures that made it possible for the members of Congress to stroll through the market, located outside the Green Zone, as Media Matters for America documented. Additionally, on the April 2 edition of MSNBC Live, on-screen text read: "Sen. John McCain: Baghdad crackdown is working" and "Sen. John McCain says there are reasons for 'cautious optimism.' " However, as this text appeared, NBC News correspondent Tom Aspell said, "It's hard to see where he's getting his information from." In fact, after subsequent reports, McCain was forced to admit that he had "miss{poken}" when he declared the market safe, as Media Matters has noted. Indeed, an April 3 New York Times article reported that the delegation arrived "with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees -- the equivalent of an entire company -- and attack helicopters circled overhead" and that "the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans' conclusions."