Iraq: lost in translation?
I’ve written before about Peter Braestrup’s book Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington. It describes how the media got the Tet Offensive wrong.
Braestrup’s conclusion is that the press errors were mostly multidetermied, and that most of them were not necessarily the result of press bias, but rather misperceptions, misinformation, and ignorance. But the whole thing added up to an error of major proportions, one that had a huge effect on American public opinion.
Granted, Amir Taheri’s latest NY Post column is no Big Story. For starters, it’s a short essay, not a book. Perhaps we’ll call it “Small Story.” But that’s only because of its length, not its importance. Because there’s nothing little about press distortions concerning Iraq, nor about their importance in influencing the course of this war and our will to fight it.
Like Braestrup, Taheri doesn’t ascribe all the errors of Iraq reportage to bias or intent. Some are simply the function of reporters’ lack of knowledge of the language. Dependent on translators, they don’t always get the correct information–especially in the early years, translators often had agendas. Journalist isolation is part of the problem, as well. Both hazards are inherent when trying to cover events in a unfamiliar country that has been blocked from significant contact with the West for decades. Then there’s the fact that news of bombings and death is easy to report, and has the old “if it bleeds, it ledes” sensationalistic appeal.
Bias does come into play as well, however. According to Taheri, many papers predicted chaos and failure in Iraq and don’t want to be proven wrong, and thus they naturally skew their coverage to the negative. Whether or not this motivation is conscious and deliberate, or subtle and hidden, perhaps even from the journalists themselves (I happen to believe the latter is the case), is unknown.
Taheri also gives us some of the Iraqi good news that we usually don’t hear too much about:
Last month, Iraq received the U.N.’s special environmental prize for reviving parts of the marshes drained by Saddam, thus saving one of the world’s most precious ecological treasures. Almost no one in the media noticed.
Also last month, the Iraqi soccer squad reached the finals of the Asian Games – beating out Japan, China, South Korea and Iran. Again, few in the West noticed.
In 2006, almost 200 major reconstruction projects were officially completed and 4,000 new private companies registered in Iraq. But few seem interested in the return of private capitalism after nearly 50 years of Soviet-style control.
Iraq’s new political life is either ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. The creation of political parties (some emerging from decades of clandestine life), the work of Iraq’s parliament, the fact that it is almost the only Arab country where people are free to discuss politics to their hearts’ content – these are of no interest to those determined to see Iraq as a disaster, as proof that toppling Saddam was a modern version of the original sin.
Iraq may still become any of those things – but right now it is none of them. When the real history of the Iraq war is written, posterity might marvel at the way modern media were used to manufacture that original sin.
Let’s hope Taheri never has to write that sorrowful sequel to Braestrup’s book: The Bigger Story.
I think that all this rhetoric is silly. Anon does ,although not overtly, admit that the press is bias ,but his thesis is who cares about all the facts as long as the overall picture is correct.OK Anon let’s assume that overall situation is “bad” ; 1) do you want us to win in Iraq,2) what suggestions do you have for us to win in Iraq? Also do you ever read bloggers like INF, Yon and Roggio?And finally give us your assessment of troop morale in Iraq.
Neo:
Wielding Occam’s Razor with abandon, I think the most likely explanation for the MSM’s actions is sheer stupidity.
As far as the mindset that refuses to examine and correct error, I see the same behavior in my worse students. Rather than try to see where they went wrong in a problem and correct for the future, they blame someone outside themselves.
The Dog Ate My Homework excuse set can be applied with little distortion. The Dog in this case being GWBush, the Military, and the ever-popular Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
Like every adolescent, they don’t want to grow up and function as adults. Too hard, too much work.
Whatever you call the domestic insurgency’s motivations, Neo, they are still the domestic insurgency. And because their counterparts, the foreign insurgency, has just as much complexity in their motivations, itis good support for how many peanuts and M&Ms are in the domestic insurgency.
Intentions only matter to the effect of answering the question. “How we may crush the insurgency”. But that is about it, there is no ethical, aesthetic, or morality benefit to knowing the intentions and motivations of the insurgency other than the function requirement of stamping them out.
It’s interesting that you can correctly identify some of the myriad factors that prevent any story from being portrayed 100% accurately – bias, ignorance, distance and isolation, language barriers (some you missed include deadlines, the demands of markets which seek sensationalism and care little for international affairs, etc) – and yet still believe that the knowledge you have of Iraq (and the rest of the world) is more accurate than the knowledge held by those who disagree with you.
Wouldn’t a more honest appraisal admit that, if the information coming out of Iraq is imperfect at best, then you are just as incapable of knowing what’s really happening? Or, in a nice little epistemological contortion, do you assert that information that supports what you already believe is entirely accurate, but information that disagrees with what you already believe is hopelessly flawed and biased?
Poor reading on Anon’s part. Neo is pointing out what the MSM does to the information after they get it. We’re all victims of incomplete information, but adding to that problem is the fact that other issues, such as sensationalism, bias, etc. add slant to that already imperfect mass of data. The idea is to try analyze the totality of the information, or as much of it as you can get, and not simply settle for that which the mainstream media selects for us. And not merely accept their analysis either, but understand that they’re own info is incomplete, and processed to boot.
The more honest appraisal is that information coming out of Iraq is imperfect at best, but there are problems added in the process of reporting. The fact that the mainstream media may not be intentionally malicious in that distortion does not change the fact that distortion occurs. That is the thesis here, not some “epistemological contortion” to try to raise the value of the argument by asserting superior interpretation. The only epistemological contortion here was committed by Anon, in his attempt to substitute a short, superficial deconstruction based on an assumption of Neo’s motivations for a real analysis of the source Neo cites and the specifics of her arguments.
Neo does have an imperfect understanding of events, as she has said before. But the difference between her and her critics is that she has the wisdom to make up for this deficiency, either through awareness or preventive actions. When a person has a lack of information at their disposal when making a decision, she has to make the best use of her resources. This takes the ability to adapt, the ability to perservere, the ability to make bricks out of straw, and mostly the wisdom to see beyond the petty lack in material resources. Doing instead of whining sounds simple, but many people would surprisingly do the easy and complex rather than the simple and the hard.
We all have limits on our resources, our knowledge, and our ability to see things for what they are. Learning how to operate under these human limitations in a manner reminiscent of Ghenghis Khan and the AP, is simply defunctional. Learning to operate under these human limitations as Neo-Neocon and combat leaders have done, is the model to follow.
If I may be so bold to assert something, Neo, concerning your style. You make connections using what you have learned and what you may learn yet. So it is not as some people say, that you believe yourself omniscient or better able to get more accurate data. I am sure you realize that the President both gets more data and more accurate data than you and I, but this doesn’t really mean that it is set in stone.
There are many ways to analyze data. Internet data mining, computer keyword searches, facial recognition, intuitive, deductive, computer chess programs, and so forth. There are many ways in which data and information may be massaged to acquire a conclusion. Right or wrong but mostly we should concentrate on the methods which produce the right conclusion.
Your ability to make connections, and not just between psychology and history, but between various other subjects I have really no clue about, is I believe the key to understanding Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Meaning, quantum physics deals with uncertainty a lot. The inability to know everything about an object at once. That does not mean knowledge is not possible, it should not make us believe we should stop our journey of discovery Neo and leave it to the elites.
When you delve into the esoteric realms of high dimensional mathematics and quantum physics, Neo, does honesty really come into the equation? Many people here talk about honesty, notably your honesty, but pure data is totally honest. And it can be totally wrong too. Honesty is not a method to discover knowledge or truth.
Making connections, however, is something I believe is the superior and better model to analyzing data and coming to the right conclusions.
ElMondoHummus,
That’s bunk. Lots of bias exists in news reporting; the fact that a handful of corporations own the vast majority of US media stymies most reporting on corporate shenanigans in this country, for example. However, the fact that bias exists does not allow you to disregard everything that disagrees with you, assume that everything that agrees with you is accurate, and sit back, satisfied that you don’t have to question or challenge any of your assumptions. The fact that news out of Iraq is overwhelmingly bad does not allow you to wave your hands, snort “bias!” and believe whatever you want about the country. Even if news is biased, horribly biased, you basically have to be stubborn as a mule to believe that things are going smashingly. Bias is not “lying,” but rather “the story is only an image of, rather than a duplicate of, reality.”
Think of it like a set of statistics – 95% of reports say Iraq is awful, 5% say it’s great! Plus or minus five percent accuracy.
Big historical events are like elections, not so much who wins or loses but who best at the spin.
Iraq the story has become the story itself. Very few Americans are concerned about the need to finish the job and make the free world safe from radical Islam but are more concerned with the emotional parts of the story that by themselves cannot tell the whole story of our military involvement their. The bottom line is that this form of storytelling serves no purpose but to entertain.
Americans have adapted to what the story is at the time and in a modern 24 hour newscycle that easy to do. This is because the national discourse can be lead on a tangient and miss the mark on what the military expedition is all about.
This country cannot stand to lose in Iraq. The imams and mullah of the Middle East would attribute this to the divine intervention of Allah, and that would put a stranglehold on the followers of that religion. It would whip those people up into a state of loonacy.
This war is about more than Americans playing cowboys and Iranians. We have to get serious about this war and support on the home front or the world will never forgive us for that.
Danny L. McDaniel
Lafayette, Indiana
Anon:
The “fact” that you state that the “news out of Iraq is overwhelmingly bad” simply proves Neo’s thesis. If you were to read/watch anything other than mass media outlets, you’d realize that. And it’s not just “right-wing conservative talk shows” or “corporate-friendly capitalist running-dog” newspapers or “warblogs” that are giving us a truer picture of what’s happening in Iraq, it’s even some outlets that are foreign: http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/DispatchesFromBaghdadASoldiersViewOnIraq.htm
I quote: “on each occasion that I return to this country have seen progress being made that rarely gets reported.”
This sentiment is echoed by every serviceperson I’ve ever read who’s come back from Iraq. They are amazed at the skewed information we receive here in the states.
“This sentiment is echoed by every serviceperson I’ve ever read who’s come back from Iraq.”
Wow! Every service person you’ve ever read? Color me convinced! I guess that’s all it really took – the hundreds or thousands of articles, reports, studies, surveys, and first-hand accounts coming out of Iraq are nothing when faced by the overwhelming power of your anecdotal evidence!
Pretty much every “good news” story I’ve seen on Iraq is reported by the dread MSM, which is then picked up by something like this blog. Except the “good news” tends to be overwhelmed by the whole “bad news” stuff – I suppose one could assume that if 99% of stories are bad, they’re only bad because of bias, but the 1% of stories that are good are totally true and completely free of bias. That makes lots of sense, right?
“Very few Americans are concerned about the need to finish the job and make the free world safe from radical Islam”
What, pray-tell, does Iraq have to do with making the free world safe from radical Islam? Even if we left, and the violence got super bad, do you really think that elements of the Sunni minority could topple the Shi’a-dominated government? If not, are you worried about the Shi’a-dominated government – the one freely elected and supported by the US – imposing radical Islam? If so, are you worried that the elements of the Sunni factions which favor Islamism would ever be able to create a terrorist-haven like pre-2001 Afghanistan with the US 5th Fleet sitting in the gulf?
PS Stumbley,
I honestly love – love! – the idea that the fact that most news out of Iraq disagrees with what you already believe PROVES that the news out of Iraq is false. Love it! Does delusion of this magnitude come naturally, or must you work for it?
PPS Stumbley,
Do you realize the irony of citing a website operated by the Ministry of Defense of a country involved in the war in Iraq, operated by a government heavily invested in maintaining the perception that its decision to go to war was a good one in the face of widespread popular opposition, as evidence that even foreigners get that Iraq is going well? You do realize what http://www.mod.uk is, right? Not a newspaper, right?
“not a newspaper”.
Exactly. And what is so truthful about a newspaper? You’ve made a great deal out of pointing out that “Pretty much every “good news” story I’ve seen on Iraq is reported by the dread MSM, which is then picked up by something like this blog.”
Which is it, then? The “overwhelmingly bad” news that we see from AP, CBS, NBC, ABC, Reuters, BBC, ad nauseam, or the “good news” reported by the exact same corporate stooges (“the fact that a handful of corporations own the vast majority of US media stymies most reporting on corporate shenanigans in this country, for example”)? You can’t have it both ways, dude. Either the “bad news” is biased, or the “good news” is…or maybe, we’re just not getting the whole complicated story from ANYBODY—let alone fools like you.
Wow – somebody gets it!
“maybe, we’re just not getting the whole complicated story from ANYBODY”
Exactly. At least, drawing from what Neo wrote, if you assume that the bad news is the result of bias, then you should also assume that the good news – from the same sources – is also the result of bias. In the end, you’re left with nothing. I don’t buy this – I think “bias” is different from “a total lack of truth,” and tend to believe that lots of stories of “hundreds of thousands have died with no end in sight” is not mitigated by “we painted a school.” The two are not mutually exclusive, but the fact that some good things are happening doesn’t change the fact that lots and lots of bad things are happening. People who frequent this blog seem to want to believe, however, that they can wave their hands and declare news they don’t like to be likes (“biased”) and news they like to be totally true. You either accept that a) some bias does not completely mitigate the value of reporting, which tells of an Iraq in pretty bad shape, or b) if bias negates the value of a news story, then it negates the value of all reporting – good and bad.
Kudos to A, for manipulating words and logic with the skill of a Chomsky. Quite amazing. It has no effect on me of course, but then propaganda never had much effect on me in the first place. Commercials were far more entertaining really.
I mean if you really really don’t understand how propaganda operations work, then sure A might sound convincing. But really, get down to even the simple techniques that advertising companies use, and you will realize that the power to manipulate perception is very different from the power to manipulate reality.
Ymarsakar is honestly arguing that thousands upon thousands of corporate employees are all engaged in a massive conspiracy to destroy corporations and democracy and freedom. Right. This is why I will ignore you, you sweet Prince of Wankdom.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/01/15/grumbling-in-the-ranks/trackback/
January 15, 2007, 1:30 pm
Grumbling in the Ranks
Vocal opposition to President’s Bush’s strategy of sending more than 20,000
additional troops to help secure Iraq has grown to include some of the
troops themselves.
A group of more than 50 active-duty military officers will deliver a
petition to Congress on Tuesday signed by about 1,000 troops calling for an
end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. “Any troop increase over here will just
produce more sitting ducks, more targets,” said Sergeant Ronn Cantu, who is
serving in Iraq.
Under the 1988 Military Whistleblower Protection Act, active duty military,
National Guard, and Reservists may communicate with any member of Congress
without fear of reprisal, even if copies of the communication are sent to
others.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/01/15/grumbling-in-the-ranks/trackback/
—
All it comes down to is – who do you trust. I have been lied to – directly lied too – so many times by the news media that I have zero trust for them.
I have seen speeches live where a person says “I abhor people who say “I believe “” only to see that 95% say “Senator says “I believe “”. The same arguments given then – how can I be so sure? How can I go against all those 95%, sure those there say it didn’t happen that way but what do they know?
I can also take any of the handful of fields of study I know enough about to be called an “expert” and find them usually incompetent to the point of being harmful. They find “experts” that fit their beliefs. I see no reason to believe that I just happen to know the two or three fields that they are that bad on.
Give whatever reasons you want. believe whoever you want. I’ll take the things like what returning soldiers say about morale, what they say about the progress they made, and what they say about how the people there treat them over someone in the states or that never leaves their hotel.
One of the things most people don’t understand about guerrila/propaganda wars, is that they are small unit conflicts. Where anyone, in the 21st century, can make an execution video and send it around.
Small cell terrorists work just the same as propaganda cells do. But the propagandists don’t care if they are discovered, because they only come up with words that kill, not bombs, so they are unafraid of being raided or captured.
Many people like A believe that there is a Vast Right Wing conspiracy on the internet, the dreaded neo-cons if you will, that have deluded the American people with lies into a war. Or even that the vast right wing blogosphere is supporting and aping whatever the President tells them to support and say.
And the funny thing is Neo, they actually believe in their own propaganda, in their own righteousness. Amazing.
“If you were to take it and put me in an opinion poll and said ‘Do I approve of Iraq’ I’d be one of those that said, ‘No, I don’t approve of what’s taking place in Iraq,”’ Mr. Bush said in the interview.
This from the man who never reads newspapers.
Bush also doesn’t read Neo-Neocon. Which is why he is stuck more or less surrounded by domestic enemies.
Actually, I never argued there was some conspiracy. If I recall correctly, Ymarsakar, it was you who, just a few posts above, argued that “the media” constituted some sort of conspiracy to convince the American people that things in Iraq were going poorly; now you’re accusing me of just the same thing? Have you know shame, no memory, or no capacity for introspection?
“Bush also doesn’t read Neo-Neocon. Which is why he is stuck more or less surrounded by domestic enemies.”
This has to be one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while. You’re asserting, basically, that two bloggers know more about Iraq than the President because the President disagrees with your assumptions; in other words, you’re arguing that your assumptions must be reality, and when reality intrudes on your assumptions, it’s the President who knows less than you – where are you getting this magical intelligence from, praytell?
Anon-
You use the term “pray-tell” way too much!
At least I identify myself, pray-tell!
Danny L. McDaniel
There he goes again, that anon! News reports are accurate as long as they favor his own biases, you see. But not when they occasionally favor corporations — which is a nasty little epistemological contortion in itself, though common enough. What the blather comes down to is this:
Can there be such a thing as systematic distortion of the news by the news media? Yes, for example when the historically elite news media is dominated by coastal elites who are politically and culturally at odds with the person elected to run the country.
Can we still extract some meaningful news from such media? Yes, but with a critical eye, that’s aware of the bias and discounts its emphasis.
So should we just accept as “fact” the impression conveyed by a politically biased media that “Iraq is in pretty bad shape”? In a word, no. If we allow for the bias, then at the very least we can say that Iraq is in better shape than we’ve been lead to believe. In fact, we might well conclude that anon’s got it exactly backward: the fact that some bad things are happening doesn’t change the fact that lots and lots of good things are happening. Of course, for anon and his trollish peanut gallery, that’s not so good. Which is why he’s hanging in there, doing his bit, typing up a storm.
“News reports are accurate as long as they favor his own biases, you see.”
Again, no. Again, this is predicated on an assumption that “bias” = “the totality of the meaning of a news report.” I assume that bias represents a skewing of the meaning of a news report, not the erasure of its entire meaning and its replacement by something else. Therefore, “bias” in the media means that stories are not exact reproductions of what has actually happened, but they’re not an entirely made up fantasy either. So if you had one good story out of Iraq and one bad story, it might be difficult to figure out what’s really going on. If you had a thousand bad stories, and one good story, even if bias prevented you from getting a 100% accurate understanding of Iraq, it would still be safe to assume that things in Iraq weren’t going so well. The opposite would be equally true. I envy your ability to believe falsehood in the face of overwhelming evidence; I’ve never been able to tell pleasing lies to myself. But that’s exactly what you’re doing – clinging to a bare handful of good news and declaring that these, these stories alone! are an accurate, truthful depiction of Iraq’s reality, while all the rest is nasty rumor, slander, and lies. Madam, I salute you.
‘You use the term “pray-tell” way too much!’
Once. Maybe twice.
“At least I identify myself, pray-tell!”
Bully for you. I’ll stay peacefully anon for a while.
I’ve never been able to tell pleasing lies to myself.
Oooh, I don’t think so — to use your phrasing, “again, no”. If you’re not telling them to yourself, you’re certainly telling them to everyone else, again and again. For example, just here, your implied stat re: 1000 to 1 disparity in good vs. bad stories about Iraq. Or, less blatant, but more telling, your ignoring the point of the quote even while denying it. Or, your specious insinuation that, in a biased media atmosphere, numbers of stories on one side or another mean anything at all. Yes, “bias” doesn’t necessarily mean completely false — though we’ve certainly seen that it can mean that — but it can taint virtually every story that a biased media allows its public to see, and the critical reader/viewer simply has to learn how to filter out the crud. Unless, of course, it’s the crud that you like.
For those who might want to hear an interview with Michael Yon, the embedded blogger in Iraq you can go to:http://www.punditreview.com/2007/01/16/michael-yon-live-from-iraq/
Michael, who has just returned to Iraq after a some months back stateside, is encouraged by the progress he sees since he left. He’s particularly impressed by the improved capabilities of the Iraqi soldiers and police. With all the bad news, this is a small ray of sunshine.
Bias, Anon, means that the 1000 bad stories that you’re reading are the 1000 that escape the filter of bias. Bias means the MSM IS CHOOSING WHAT WE ARE ALLOWED TO READ. That’s the point of the thread, you dolt. It doesn’t mean that the reporter is looking at things “a little skewed”, it means that we are not hearing ANYTHING or VERY LITTLE about what’s good in Iraq. And that plays into the hands of the people in the media who want to discredit anything this administration does…and it plays into the hands of the [insert your favorite descriptive phrase here—I’ll just use “jihadists” for brevity] who want us to lose in the Middle East so that they can preserve the radical Islamic status quo.
Sorry for shouting, Neo, but these trolls are just too much sometimes.
“your specious insinuation that, in a biased media atmosphere, numbers of stories on one side or another mean anything at all. ”
“Bias means the MSM IS CHOOSING WHAT WE ARE ALLOWED TO READ. ”
You’re right, the number of stories that are “good” or “bad” doesn’t mean much – except as shorthand for something like “the number of reporters, American, international, and Iraqi, who have since the war began and from every part of Iraq, analyzing a huge range of data, reported on the situation in Iraq.”
The idea that hundreds of thousands of journalists, from every country in the world, working for dozens or hundreds of corporations, with hundreds of thousands of employees, from every imaginable background, for years and years, in near-perfect lockstep, have perpetrated a massive conspiracy to lie to the world about how smashingly things are going in Iraq, is as lunatic a conspiracy theory as any one might find at Democratic Underground or Al Haramain.
I know! I will broker a truce – The Freaking Lunatic Accord of 2007, by which the insane fringes of the political spectrum agree that, if “the evil media” has in fact been engaging in a massive conspiracy for four years, then Bush personally flew the planes into the World Trade Center, parachuting out at the last minute. Then you can all just congregate at one website, and free up some bandwith for normal people.
Yes, time to get rid of the Trolls for the new year. Or, at least ignore them, as they never have anything to say.
I do wonder that Troutsky and anon are still here, however, instead of fighting side by side with their comrades, the Jihadis, in Iraq.
Yes, a good New Year’s resolution would be to dump the trolls—or, at least, ignore them, since they never have anything substantive to say.
“I do wonder that Troutsky and anon are still here, however, instead of fighting side by side with their comrades, the Jihadis, in Iraq.”
Yes! I can’t wait until the terrorists have killed all you brave fighters in the name of liberty! No longer will your typing hold back the tide of Islamocomunimexicanoliberalfascism! Then, with you out of the way, I, The Left! will have all your women for myself! Too bad all I want to do is make everyone get gay married.
“However, the fact that bias exists does not allow you to disregard everything that disagrees with you, assume that everything that agrees with you is accurate, and sit back, satisfied that you don’t have to question or challenge any of your assumptions.”
Which is why we don’t do that. Not that you would be able to tell the difference.
Anon: the number of reporters, American, international, and Iraqi, who have since the war began and from every part of Iraq, analyzing a huge range of data, reported on the situation in Iraq.
You know, it’s interesting to see how much faith the liberal-left has in the media so long as it chants their line — “huge range of data”, “hundreds of thousands of employees”, “every imaginable background”, etc., etc. No hint here of any notions of editorial slant, bandwagon effect, echo chamber, etc. — nuhuh. Of course, were all the media to look like Fox News we’d be hearing not just a different story but some high-pitched squealing as well, but, since it’s an accident of cultural history that, for now, the elite media has a decidedly left-liberal bent, the libs are as happy a bunch as pigs in … clover. Witness the witless glee of anony, here. None of which changes the fact that, given systemic bias in news coverage, the number of stories distorted is irrelevant — the problem is simply to filter out facts from the biased “impressions”, and fit them into as clear a general picture as we can.
snotty, bickering children.
Heres something “substantive”! Time magazine has hired William Kristol to do essays.Maybe this is just to keep up the “perception” of balance?
Anyway, you can ignore this or ban me but let me offer a plan for victory.What if the US gives up on the illusion of a “unity” government and sides with the Shiia? We convince SaudiArabia to not intervene and begin the orderly re-location of Sunnis. Many will come to the US of course.The US forces leave so that Shiia are not percieved as collaborators and the new government is given resources to battle alQaeda. Not ideal but maybe the best we can hope for under the circumstances?
Please don’t bring the Sunnis here. We already have enough swarthy men, with oily hair, running liquor stores in my neighborhood, where whisky and cigarettes are dispensed to the junior high crowd.
“Witness the witless glee of anony, here.”
There’s really nothing to be happy about Iraq, Sally. I realize that, were the situation reversed, you imagine that you would feel glee at being able to use a foreign civil war and the deaths of thousands to really nail your domestic political opponents, and believe the same about me, but I don’t really care.
“the number of stories distorted is irrelevant”
Correct – but for the wrong reasons. Again, “number of stories” is shorthand. What you’re asking is for me to believe that thousands of reporters, from dozens of countries, working for large corporations, have been able to keep a massive secret and perpetuate a giant conspiracy for four years. That “number” – all the thousands upon thousands of people involved, over so many years – is what matters. It is, in essence, a deranged conspiracy theory. Do you suspect Freemason and Illuminati involvement as well?
“have been able to keep a massive secret and perpetuate a giant conspiracy for four years”
Again, Anon. Please listen, or pay attention to what people are actually saying. Yes, things are bad in Iraq. It is not a socialist worker’s paradise. However, IN SPITE of the carnage, 4,000 businesses have been started in Baghdad. IN SPITE of the carnage, oil production and electricity production are up, over pre-war levels. IN SPITE of the carnage, schools are opening, being rebuilt, and students are attending.
These are stories that the MSM DOES NOT PUBLISH. You will not have found them in the bulk of what most Americans use for receiving news. Is it a “conspiracy” that these stories are not being reported by say, The Washington Post?
I have no idea. I DO know, having worked for that particular paper, having sat in on editorial meetings and seen how stories are chosen for publication, that the editors are GATEKEEPERS of what the public is allowed to read. THEY choose. THEY decide what’s “news”. THEY assign the stories. It doesn’t take “thousands” of employees…it only takes a few. It only takes ONE Eason Jordan to be paid off by Saddam for CNN to ignore stories critical of his regime.
Do you follow now?
Anon is using a straw man, talking about a “conspiracy” among huge numbers of journalists.
You don’t need to conspire when you all think alike.
Oh, and by the way, Anon. When I was at the Post, the sum total of employees was a little over 300, including pressmen and advertising sales. Actual reporters, including foreign correspondents, was probably no more than a hundred. Hardly anything approaching “thousands”.
How good is Iraq doing? You used the number of businesses opening, the number of schools opening, oil production and electricity production as rough metrics.
While GDP is up slightly, the Iraqi Ministry of Social Affairs reports an unemployment rate of 48%
Nation-wide, Iraq has on average 8.1 hours of electricity a day, down from a peak of 14.3 hours a day in October 2005; Baghdad has just 4.3 hours a day, down from a peak of 16.4 in March of 2004. The stated goal was to reach a monthly production of 6,000 Megawatts; this has never been reached, and national production has declined from a peak of about 4,500 Megawatts to just 3,500 Megawatts. These numbers come from the Department of State, while the National Target number comes from DoD.
Iraq is producing 1.99 million barrels of oil daily, down from a pre-war peak of 2.5 million barrels a day. These numbers come from the Department of State.
School enrollment IS up, or at least was in 2005, with a 27% increase from 2002 to 2005, from 1.1 million to 1.4 million children in middle and high schools. This number comes from the New York Times.
You can access all of this information, and more, at the Brookings Insitution’s Iraq Index: http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf
So, oil production is down, electricity is down, more businesses are opening but not enough to employ more than half the workforce. BUT – the good news as reported by the New York Times – more kids are in school.
SO! Where does this leave us? I suspect that you have it all backwards: it’s really the US government engaged in a massive conspiracy to report all the bad news coming out of Iraq, while the brave MSM tries to let us know about all the good stuff going on.
You’re right, Anon, it’s all a big mess, we should all just give up and go home. Better yet, we should commit suicide because the world just won’t get better, no matter what we do.
You go first.
So, when you’re confronted with actual evidence that you’re wrong – good news coming from a major media outlet, and bad news coming straight from the US government – your first reaction is to ask me to kill myself for pointing out the evidence?
Nice way to handle being wrong.
No, Anon. You WIN. You’re RIGHT. I’m TOTALLY WRONG. You’re the smartest guy in creation! You can Google with the best of them! There’s no media bias! Everything is TRUE! GW is SATAN! Republicans eat babies! Corporations will RUIN the world! We must all embrace Gaia before it’s too late. I’ll stop drinking Coca-Cola and start imbibing Chai lattes!
I’m SORRY. I’ll vote for compulsory national health care. I’ll force my congressperson to vote for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research at gunpoint!
I’ll DRIVE A HYBRID, for g*d’s sake. Okay?
I wish people would talk less about Iraq and more about Iran.
This is not (or should not be) a war against Iraq, not even a war against “terrorists”.
But a war IN Iraq, AGAINST Iran. War which will also take place into Iranian territory in the following years.
“Republicans eat babies!”
I knew one of you was going to admit it eventually.
With fava beans and a nice Chianti….
Anon: Why did you try a strawman argument against what was said in Neo’s post and other comments? Since when have we here disregarded “everything that disagrees with (us)”? That’s far from the case. My whole point was about having to try to work through the end result of processed reporting, and you throw out some erroneous comment about corporate “shenanigans” as a counter. Which, BTW, is wrong: Corporate malfeasance has been well documented in the news. Go to Forbes.com, or the New York Times for proof of this. Anyway… I have indeed paid attention to the data that’s been coming out of Iraq, and attempting to work through the biases, distortions (unintentional or otherwise), and mistakes, and I have never ignored something simply because I somehow “disagreed” with it.
And as to that strawman: “Disagree”. What in the world do you mean we “disregard everthing that disagrees with (us)”? Data is data, facts are facts, and we are not “disregarding” any of it. It is the conclusions some draw from that mass of info that some of us challenge. You accuse us of ignoring datapoints because it “disagrees” with us, but when have we done that? Abu Ghraib is a datapoint that runs counter to my normal image of US servicepeople overseas, but I do not “disregard” it. The events in Haiditha may be a lie by the residents there, or a lie by the Marines, but either way, I do not ignore the data. Why accuse us of selectivity when in fact, that’s what the antiwar side is guilty of: Selective presentation of facts, context snipping, and disregard of gains and positive outcomes?
The fact that news out of Iraq is overwhelmingly bad does not cause me to wave my hands, snort “bias!” and ignore what is reported, but neither does it lead me to believe only whatever is presented to me by such organizations. It causes me to look deeper, and attempt to gain additional information and context, and understand that the overwhelming lean in one direction can be caused by many human failings and frailties. Including the pre-judgement by many on what the war should represent to the media’s readership, the mistaken belief that there is indeed a plethora of coverage in Iraq – Michael Yon is one such person that has decried the numbers covering the news in country, as well as their distribution – language issues, human, logistical, and cultural limits on what a reporter can understand, “acts-of-news-gathering” issues, such as deadlines, snipping of context (unintentional and not), and so on.
What I was trying to say was that many of us try to work through the slants, errors, misrepresentations, and outright leans we get in the news. And your reaction was to call it “bunk” and try to build a false picture of us disdaining data because it “disagrees” with us? Not only is that a weak counter, it’s based on your fantasy of how we think, not any real knowledge of how we think. Try again! You can do better than that!
Not to mention a total ignorance of how news is “reported”. I mentioned in a previous post about the actual number of employees that the Washington Post had (in the mid-nineties). I can vouch for that number because I was there. The whole organization employed slightly over 300 people, most of whom were support and sales people. The actual number of “reporters” was about 100, and that included foreign correspondents. My guess is that the numbers today are not significantly higher. Most foreign reporting is either done by “stringers” (local people who give local bureau heads a story) or by picking up reports from news aggregators like the Associated Press (who in turn rely on local stringers, like “Jamil Hussein”.) Very little is done in the way of fact-checking, and in very few instances is the actual reporter there at the scene of the news. He/she is relying on the veracity of the stringer as to the truth of the story. Moreover, when a reporter can put his/her byline on a story that ledes, he/she is more likely to want to post similar stories in the future; it’s just human nature to want to be the guy/gal that “got the scoop”. So, when “Jamil Hussein” is fabricating stories right and left and the “reporter” is getting a bunch of front-page bylines, who’s NOT getting the truth?
We readers, that’s who.
Anon: Again, “number of stories” is shorthand. What you’re asking is for me to believe that thousands of reporters, from dozens of countries, working for large corporations, have been able to keep a massive secret and perpetuate a giant conspiracy for four years. That “number” – all the thousands upon thousands of people involved, over so many years – is what matters.
For anyone who thinks it’s possible to engage anon in legitimate debate, this little gem ought to be a lesson. First, note how “number of stories” — which is exactly what he was talking about earlier — is no longer what he’s talking about now, once it’s been shown to be irrelevant. No, now “number of stories” is just supposed to have been “shorthand” — shorthand for thousands of reporters, dozens of countries, hundreds of time zones, blah, blah, blah. You know, numbers, man! There all just numbers! Shorthand! Yeah right.
Second, note how carefully he avoids the notion of systemic bias, which was the point of the post and of many of the comments he believes he’s “debating” — instead, he refers only to an obviously absurd conspiracy theory which no one else is talking about. Now, if he’d wanted to argue that the only way you can have systemic bias in a society is through a carefully orchestrated and maintained conspiracy, that would at least have been honest, however obtuse. But he at least knows that would be a stupid argument, and so avoids that too. He’d rather be dishonest than look dumb — but ends up being both.
This Anon is pretty amusing because he actually has an internal logic, which while circular, is still there. More fun to read than Spank and Conned combined, for sure.
My guess is that Anon IS Spank and conned, just in another incarnation.
Why is it that a handful of western liberal/leftist coastal elites, hanging around a pool in the Green Zone, and depending upon dubious quality locals, regardless of their political motivations,…why is that a better information input source that thousands of Arabic speaking military intel, all of whom are out and about the various neighborhoods, villages, and cities 24/7, 365?
Whom has the better feedback loop? The press that writes the same story or the military that buries their friends and comrades as the payment for delusions and errors?
Another thing, odd how the leftist meme that the military/gov can’t be trusted when they are the main source and the press hangs around them like bees. You’d think the press would get as far away from the lying, delusional Green Zone and out amongst the legitimate and sincere resistance? I mean, isn’t that where the truth is, or at least somewhat closer to the truth? Is the press in bed with the military, Anon?
Why is it that in my fifty years, and personally involved in ten or so press stories, I’ve never read one that faintly resembled the nature of the event I was in? I usually read the stories and scratch my head and say to myself, “Where did he/she get that from?” Never the less I am told that on more complex events….the press is the high quality describer of immediate reality, even though I know they can’t write about a power outage with any degree of precision.
Capitalism vastly rewards those who have the ability to more closely comprehend the reality of the near future of human behavior and social trends. One would think journalist would be good at this, having their ear to the ground, close to the people and all that. Odd, that one never reads about journalist leaving the noble fields of truth to make a fortune in filthy lucre, isn’t it?
I guess I’m still confused. If “the media” – hundreds of people per outlet, and hundreds of outlets, not to mention international media outlets with their reporters, staffs, and lack of institutionalized biases found in the US (though they may have their own – an issue which none of you have discussed) – is systematically biased against victory in Iraq, or whatever it is they’re biased against, and want America to fail by convincing Americans things aren’t going well so they’ll pressure the government to withdraw, then why was I a) able to find “good news” stories coming from the New York Times, and why did I find lots of pretty stark “bad news” numbers coming from the US government?
That is, did the secret cabal at NYT headquarters just let that story slip?
and…
If the US government is releasing information on Iraq that confirms the reporting that says “things aren’t going so well: unemployment is at 50%, electricity production is down, oil production is down, and violence is up,” then how biased can the media be if it is reporting information confirmed by the US government itself? Or is the US government also hopelessly biased?
Anon: I guess I’m still confused.
I know he thinks this admission is just a rhetorical affectation, but he likely is confused on this, as he was on an earlier topic. The sources of his confusion are no doubt numerous, but here are a couple:
1) he seems to think that stories and sources must be amenable to a simple binary clasification — either they report “good news” or they report “bad news” — so when he finds any source reporting something outside of its bias, he experiences some cognitive dissonance;
2) he seems to think that bias can only result from conscious and deliberate conspiracy, and so gets quickly confused by his “numbers” again — “hundreds of people, hundreds of outlets”, etc.
What he seems genuinely incapable of grasping is that systemic bias can infect many institutions in society, in the US and internationally, including both the media and government — but that such bias differs from a coordinated conspiracy in, among other things, the very fact that it’s not a consistent or invariant phenomenon. In fact, that’s why it’s called a “bias”.
“his thesis is who cares about all the facts as long as the overall picture is correct.”
Actually, no. My thesis is, roughly, that while media representations of reality are inherently inaccurate, because a re-presentation of reality can never be reality – for a variety of reasons, only one of which is “bias,” – but that this distortion does not invalidate ideologically unpleasant information. That is, even if there is systematic bias, the sheer volume of reporting by a huge range of reporters (in which group I will include US government officials who report information on Iraq) indicates that things are, on the whole, pretty awful there. When the US government releases statistics that indicate things are getting worse, the issue of “media bias” becomes basically irrelevant. You can crow all you want that this newspaper or that reporter is biased, but even if you only read official numbers coming from the US government itself, you’d have to conclude that things are going very poorly.
“do you want us to win in Iraq”
If by this question you mean something like “Do you want Iraq to become a prosperous democracy, at peace with itself and its neighbors, from which no terrorism originates and in which no US troops need be stationed for our benefit or the benefit of Iraqis?” – then yes, I wish for this. I also wish for a pony and x-ray vision and the superpower of flight. Whether I want this to happen is largely irrelevant – I don’t believe it can happen. I don’t believe this primarily because foreign powers can rarely have much impact on the survival of a domestic insurgency, historically. I’m guessing that you’re definition of “winning” is something like “the US and its ally, the Iraqi government, defeat all enemies of the Iraqi government fighting against it.” The problem with this is that the Iraqi government is part of the problem, composed in large part of Shi’a militias which are, in effect, no better than the Sunni militias fighting against it. I don’t believe that we can achieve (what I assume to be) your definition of victory because, no matter how invested we are in a country of 26 million thousands of miles away, the people who actually live there and view this as a literal life-or-death struggle will always be more invested than us.
“what suggestions do you have for us to win in Iraq?”
I don’t think there ever was a possibility for us to “win” according to the above-defined metric. We could easily overthrow Saddam and, if they had existed, eliminate his WMD programs. That’s about it – but it’s important to remember that the very real and very likely result of removing a country’s government without a substantial replacement was going to be insurgency and civil war in that country. A more sober assessment prior to 2003 would have dealt with this reality – if one believed that toppling Saddam were truly vital, then one should have been willi
(cont.)
…then one should have been willing to accept the realistic costs of doing so. There would have been no shame in believing that the cost, while terrible, would have been worth it. But no one wanted to say this, and instead wanted to say that it would be, essentially, a cakewalk. Four years later, woops!
“do you ever read bloggers like INF, Yon and Roggio?”
No. Do you?
“give us your assessment of troop morale in Iraq”
I don’t know much about troop morale in Iraq. I have heard, from several people here, that anecdotally, troop morale is high. I also know that over a thousand soldiers, Iraq veterans included, recently signed a petition in favor of withdrawal, and that incidences of PTSD are high among returning troops. Troop morale is fairly hard to gauge when most troops in Iraq are, you know, in Iraq and not sitting here telling me about morale. All I know is what the EVIL MEDIA tells me.
…this distortion does not invalidate ideologically unpleasant information.
No. Like a stuck clock, occasionally anon says something more or less correct. But there’s a converse to this proposition as well — this distortion (i.e., systemic bias in the media) does not validate ideologically pleasant information, either. In fact, a critical intelligence would want to be cautious about accepting general impressions that flatter one’s preconceptions anyway, and all the more so when the impressions are conveyed by media already biased in one’s favor.
Ok, I’m stumped. If distortion prevents you from receiving accurate information about Iraq from the media, how do you get accurate information about Iraq? Are your sources not distorting that information? How do you know that they’re not distorting that information? How did you identify and decide to trust them? These are all utterly honest questions – let’s assume I’m a curious stranger who wants to know what’s really happening in Iraq, is unsure of how to get that information, and is a tabula rasa with regards to potential sources of information – I recognize that all are potential distorters, and am unsure of which to trust and how to go about doing so. What should I do?
For the record, I never sought information to flatter my preconceptions. I, foolishly, believed in 2003 that invading Iraq would be a good idea, and expected information coming from Iraq to confirm this belief. When it didn’t, I had to, over a period of months (maybe years?) revise what I believed. So I realize that it may seem obvious that people who disagree with you believe the news because it flatters their preconceptions, while you are much more intellectually rigorous, that’s not always the case.
So I wonder, in all genuine curiosity about your epistemology: how do you know what you know about Iraq, and how do you know you know what you know?
At this level, anon, we’re not really talking about epistemology, we’re simply talking about the notion of critical intelligence. I could try to run through some techniques and approaches involved in this, particularly as it applies to the problem of biased information sources, but you sound like you at least have access to a college campus, and I’m sure you can find some introductory sessions on it there. As I’ve said before, good luck!
Since Sally insists on being uncivil, I’ll extend my inquiry to the rest of you – how do you know which sources of information about Iraq to trust?
Unlike Sally, I don’t have access to the Truth and I admit my ideological bias but still use violent unrest as my metric of relative stability. Even if every child was going to school and electricity was full time and we had full employment in my town, if we woke up to find sixty people tortured to death laying in the river and two carbombs went off downtown I would say there were deep societal problems. Even IF a hospital was being built. I’m assuming the media is not making up it’s stories of violence.
I’m assuming the media is not making up it’s stories of violence.
Again, an interesting testament of faith in media that have been unable to back up particular tales of violence, and have been caught doctoring evidence.
Nevertheless, I don’t claim access to Truth either, and have to piece things together as best I can, as we all do, or should. I certainly agree that we should not simply throw away any report that goes against our assumptions, hopes or wishes — nor do I think we should simply accept any report that supports the same. Regardless of politics, skepticism is a helpful starting point.
Oh, and it’s a bit rich to see the frequently arrogant and insulting “anon” whine now about incivility. He set the tone.
There is a reason why Sally likes arguing with Anon. But I tend to think that is a mystery best left unresolved.
Anon,
Yes I do read INF, Yon and Roggio every day. I also watch the weekly Military debreifing from Baghdad by MG Caldwell on the Pentagon Channel. I also read the MNF breifings put out daily.
Do you know how many American troops there are in Fullujah today as compared to 2 years ago? It will startle you.
Do you know about what happen to the terrorist group called the Council yesterday ?
I suggest that you go to these sights as well as reading the MSM. You will be better informed. I presume you do want to get a complete picture of the situation , but hey if in your mind is made up so be it.
Eating soup with a knife is not for you.