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Thursday, December 28, 2006

Wire Service Stringers Feeding Us the Negativity

For years I've been complaining about the Iraq coverage. Most of it is negative, involves deaths & IED's and minimal about reconstruction or the positive news from Iraq. We've heard excuses and even flip-flops on the media getting out of the green zone. Kathleen Carroll of the AP said at one point that it was too dangerous to report the number of hospitals being built and then later chastised bloggers for criticizing the reporters putting their lives on the line to bring us the news.

Well over at IMDB there is a post about the perils of covering the Iraq war. The reporter who was "picked up" by the insurgents and then released is identified as a freelance journalist. One thing I have learned is that in Iraq, a freelance journalist is actually an Iraqi stringer with some serious anti-American axe to grind.

Keep that in mind the next time you read a story from one of the wire services about death and destruction. The reports are coming from stringers with no indication of their background. Kinda like the two Reuters reporters responsible for Haditha coverage being arrested for ties to terrorists.

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