"Why Can't The Liberal Bush-Hatin' Media Report The Good News In Eye-Rack"?
Yesterday, brownshirt radio personality Laura Ingraham appeared on the Today Show in order to slam the media for their lack of coverage of the "good stories" coming from the war zone and implies that they are too cowardly to do so. NBC Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel quicky responds by showing us what reporters have to go though in order to get any kind of story (which includes leaving the balcony) and Keith Olbermann provides the appropriate put-down of such a craven harpie.
We all know that the warmongers have only the troops to hide behind which is why they are shrill in their criticism of the media in order for them to showcase stories that fit their biases. But Jack Tapper, the ABC News correspondent in Baghdad, provides a harrowing example of how such a feel-good story can quickly turn awry in the New Eye-Rack:
Struck by this phenomenon, my producers and I called Iraqi TV and spoke to Amjad Hamid, the manager of the entertainment division. He seemed very proud of a new sitcom set to debut next month. In 15 half-hour episodes, "Me and Layla" - starring Odei Abdel-Sattar, an Iraqi Danny DeVito - will show the misadventures of a hapless Romeo. Hamid invited us to visit the set to interview the producer, director and actors. He was convinced that what they were trying to do was important.. . .For us, it was a chance to cover something besides car bombs, carnage and body counts. That perhaps understandable focus as well as concerns for our own security have clearly hindered the ability of journalists to tell stories about Iraqi society, about the less obvious ways that Iraqis are trying to rebuild their country.
. . .For us, it was a chance to cover something besides car bombs, carnage and body counts. That perhaps understandable focus as well as concerns for our own security have clearly hindered the ability of journalists to tell stories about Iraqi society, about the less obvious ways that Iraqis are trying to rebuild their country.
. . .Yet tragedy still has a way of rearing its head.
We had been on the set for less than an hour when Mustafa got a phone call that clearly upset him. Grabbing Abed-Jasim by the arm, Mustafa took him aside and told him that gunmen had assassinated Hamid, the entertainment-division chief, outside his Baghdad home just minutes earlier.
The director told the cast and crew. Shock and grief turned to terror. Everyone on the set immediately became restless, anxious. Eyes moist with tears began darting about the street. Iraqi TV is widely perceived as being pro-Shiite and pro-government; the Sunni-leaning Baghdad TV had just had one of its anchors shot and killed a few days before. Not that any of the violence in today's Iraq needs a reason.
Mustafa told the crew to break down; within minutes everyone had jumped into cars and minivans and fled. My crew and I weren't far behind. Iraqi TV put a black band of mourning on the top left corner of its screen and spent much of the rest of the day covering Hamid's funeral.
It is American journalists' duty to try to look at the broader picture in Iraq - telling the stories about those brave souls who seek to restore normalcy and laughter into the daily routine here. But there is no denying that the horrific violence will often make that task impossible.