Alright, let's get serious about this

“Tell me, how is it out there in Baghdad?” I was once asked in Iraq. Not by a friend from back home calling me but, alas, by a public affairs officer of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad. In the four weeks of her working for CPA she had NOT ONCE been outside the heavily fortified compound on the Tigris River, formerly Saddam’s central palace complex. The only Iraqis she had met were translators for the troops and civilian administrators. “It is too dangerous for us to go out,” she said.

May this anecdote serve as an (entirely circumstantial) reflection on just who is doing a bad job in Iraq: the occupiers or the media?

The debate on whether the media’s reporting from Iraq is too negative is getting interesting, with people on the ground raising their voice, too. This morning, Instapundit posted both a good piece by straight-out-of-Iraq UPI correspondent Pamela Hess and a rapid response by someone from inside CPA in Baghdad. Blogging at its best:

Hess writes:

"If the CPA feels that its successes are not getting appropriate media attention, they might ask themselves why.
The CPA has serious concerns about its own safety and goes to great lengths to protect itself. Its staff stays in a single relatively luxurious hotel reserved only for them on a sprawling guarded campus. Staffers work across the street at a convention center or take a private bus a few hundred yards down the road to various palaces. All are protected by no fewer than five checkpoints and searches."

Ever so slightly miffed, the anonymous CPA respondent shoots back:

"Her piece here is just one long apologia for the press who are now being (rightly) assailed for letting their biases choose what actually makes it into print and this seems to be in line with her previous work and reputation."

Easy Tiger! I’d say. After all, Hess’ fairly balanced piece attests that the situation in the country is largely BETTER than some other reporters claim. She is clearly an optimist.

Having spent some time in Iraq myself, I disagree with both. I think the situation is much, much WORSE than the U.S. media tell their readers/listeners/viewers back home. And I am not talking about power outages. In fact, I have little patience with Iraqis whining to me about the fact that at least their air conditioners worked better under Saddam. How sad is that?

What I miss in the U.S. media’s coverage is honest reporting of just how many (innocent) Iraqis get killed by U.S. troops every week. Why is that? Well, partly because the Coalition spokesmen don’t make it public. It is up to a reporter to go to places like Falluja and do the grass-roots research, asking people: “Anyone got killed here lately?” When I did it, I was shocked by the numbers. So, the real problem with the coverage is not that the journalists turn every American casualty into a big story (as they should) but that few report killings BY Americans.

Which is a disgrace, not least because those killings are largely to blame for the occupiers’ rising unpopularity in the country. I am not saying most soldiers are trigger-happy out there. They have simply been in action for many, many months already. They want to go home. They are tired and aggressive. And many of them (remember: they are 19-year-olds) are just plain scared. I don’t blame them.

Of course, the main problem I have with most of the U.S. media’s coverage about Iraq (before the war and now) is that they dodge the real issue: what strategic goals (or personal business interests) does the Bush administration pursue in Iraq? If this was a "war by choice", as Thomas L. Friedman, pointed out in his excellent op-ed today, then what has motivated this choice?

But I won’t go into that today. It is Sunday, after all.