As I was walking in downtown D.C., I saw a story in the Washington Post that actually made me purchase the paper:
U.S. Forces Move Into Stronghold Of Cleric
Insurgents Scatter as Hunt For Their Leader Intensifies
KARBALA, Iraq, May 23 — U.S. forces expanded an offensive against rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr on Sunday by pushing into his stronghold of Kufa for the first time, as his armed followers vanished from the streets of this Shiite holy city.
The battle for southern Iraq, which has occupied U.S. soldiers for weeks, appears to have shifted from a broad engagement across several fronts to a sustained battle aimed at a single elusive objective: Sadr, who leads thousands of militiamen, known as the Mahdi Army.
For seven weeks, U.S. forces have been killing scores of the fighters loyal to Sadr, who has fomented an anti-American insurrection in a region once receptive to the occupation….
Wait a sec…what’s that again? “U.S. forces have been killing scores of the fighters loyal to Sadr”? Not just a few here and there, but scores of them? Boy, I don’t remember seeing that on “Today,” my morning infotainment show! Must have missed it between the Iraqi prison photos and the 13,406th segment on low-carb dieting.
So it would appear that our war efforts are not failing. You will recall that less than a month ago, Iraq was on the verge of a full-scale civil war, and that arresting the respected Shiite thug leader Sadr was going to inspire the citizens to revolt, and the security situation was “deteriorating,” quagmire Vietnam failure unilateral blood-for-oil rama-lama-ding-dong.
Then the media abruptly switched to the prison abuse story. We are informed — by reporters who, judging by their stories, rarely venture out of their air-conditioned offices except under the protection of the U.S. military — that Arab opinion is “enraged” by these photos, trotting out numbers about how only .00034% of Moroccan Bedouins support Iraqi occupation, etc.
I remember reading similar poll numbers two years ago, before we even invaded Iraq. What’s the difference? And in a country where everyone — literally, everyone — had a family member imprisoned or murdered by the former regime, are Iraqis really that fainthearted?
Think back to 6-8 months ago, when the occupation was “failing” because “services” were not restored to the populace. Recall the endless stories from Baghdad about the electricity going out sometimes (which reporters noticed because that screwed up their laptop batteries.) Today, Iraq has more electricity than before the war, water is more abundant, schools are open, food is plentiful, etc. You never hear about the “services” because they all work, more or less, at least as well as the top-tier Third World countries.
I’ve written in Catholic Light about how the press has a meta-narrative for just about everything they write (if I didn’t, I meant to write about it.) Because of the exigencies of writing against a deadline, reporters can’t re-think The Big Picture every time they sit down to compose an article. So they have these meta-narratives they use. You know them:
Gays Are Conquering Prejudice to Claim Their Full Civil Rights
Greedy Corporations Cause Lack of Medical Insurance
Catholic Church Resists the Noble Forces of Modern Liberalism
Minorities Get Shafted — Again
Women Can Do Anything Despite Men’s Efforts to Keep Them Down
In this case, the meta-narrative is “U.S. Occupation Failing.” The narrative of an individual story is just a subset of the meta-narrative. Thus, lack of electricity is proof that the occupation is failing. So are random bombings of soldiers, and mass murders of innocent Iraqis. So are disgusting pictures of prison abuse. Or meaningless polls.
You see what I mean? Even though the original justifications for the conclusion have evaporated, the conclusion rolls along, because it’s the meta-narrative. Intellectual honesty would seem to demand a re-assessment of the conclusion, given that the facts have changed dramatically, but none is forthcoming.
You could list many huge stories the press has gotten wrong in the last 20 years, including the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the rise of radical Islam and its threat to America. Yet by and large, after missing big stories, journalists don’t collectively scratch their heads and say, “How the heck did we miss that one?” They just adjust their meta-narratives, even though that approach got them into trouble in the first place.
In five weeks, there will likely be more violence after Iraq gets its sovereignty. Mark my words, that will spark another round of breast-beating. The occupation could fail, but the cause won’t be the policies or the people involved. It may happen because the news media will have sold their defeat meta-narrative to the American public.
Then thousands and thousands of Iraqis will die. Does that futher peace on earth? Is it good and right to allow innocent human beings to die in order to defeat President Bush? It would be nice if the media re-thought their commitment to this storyline, before it’s too late.
Excellent discussion, Eric.
This reminds me of the joke about how major newspapers would report the impending end of the world. The NYT’s version would be: “World to End Thursday: Poor, Minorities Hardest Hit”.
ditto jeff. If I had a whole heap of dead trees etc I’d print it out and distribute it at work.
By any objective standard the war and the occupation have been a phenomenal success. Of course, there have been mistakes.
Even if Iraq splits into three garden-variety middle-eastern despotisms the day after we leave, the threat of Saddam Hussain and his Baathist regime to world peace is gone.
An excellent analysis, Eric. Journalists typically present themselves as objective, detached observers who are careful about facts, and who have developed skills of putting stories into larger contexts. They talk about holding a grave trust.
But in fact, it’s much easier to adopt a ‘meta-narrative’ as a group and simply plug whatever happens into that narrative, and only change the narrative (without comment, of course) when absolutely forced to do so by extremely significant events.
The ‘meta-narrative,’ of course, reflects the relatively monolithic secular-left worldview and political preferences of the bulk of journalists.
Interestingly, the guild doesn’t police itself carefully. No editor at USA Today, for instance, has resigned over the Jack Kelley scandal, or apologized to readers and taken personal responsibility for the people under their authority. Yet many journalists have called for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to resign over the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Being a journalist means never having to say you’re sorry.
Beregond, you hit on a good point about journalists policing themselves. They could set up an organization that licensed journalists if they agreed to abide by a code of conduct. That license would be revoked if they violated the code. Such a license would not have legal status — the First Amendment precludes licensing journalists — but it would be a powerful force for legitimacy. The major news media need all the legitimacy they can muster these days.
Almost forgot another one: remember before we found Saddam, how not finding him was proof of how incompetent and stupid our military leaders were?