Covering Press Coverage on Covering Iraq

crossposted from unbossed

On the Media again shows its value in this week's critiques of the way the press has failed to cover the war in Iraq.  If you want to know what is going on with the MSM, you must check in with OTM. Let me add, that this coverage is anything but dull.  

You can listen to the March 21, 2008 show (or in a few days read the transcripts) either to the entire show or its parts. Here is a summary of the stories with a link to each.

5 Years of Covering Iraq

On the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, the death toll for U.S. soldiers approaches 4,000 and the cost moves past a half-trillion dollars. Press coverage, however, is at an all-time low.

OTM takes a look at the crucial role of media in the evolution of this war. Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher and author of So Wrong for So Long, takes us back to the early days of combat.

link

The Embed Experiment

More than a quarter million American soldiers were deployed at the start of the Iraq War, but they weren't alone. Nearly 800 reporters, prepped for the battlefield and assigned to military units, embedded with the military. NPR's John Burnett was one of them.

link

Stagecrafting the War

From Colin Powell’s U.N. address in 2003 to the faked rescue of Private Jessica Lynch to the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square, the past five years of war have seen many attempts at stagecraft. Bob looks back at a few of those moments and weighs in on the symbiosis of government deception and media credulousness.

link

Finding A Voice

From Al Jazeera to soldier bloggers to home-grown Iraqi journalists, powerful voices emerged from the rubble of the Iraq War and captured the attention of the world.

link