{"id":1496,"date":"2007-10-24T06:52:22","date_gmt":"2007-10-24T11:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2007-10-24T06:52:22","modified_gmt":"2007-10-24T11:52:22","slug":"through-yon-window-breaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1496","title":{"rendered":"Through Yon Window Breaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Yon is pissed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yon’s been in Iraq covering the war as a freelance embed for almost three years now.\u00a0 As a rigid independent – unbeholden to either the administration or the media’s agenda – he’s not ever <\/em>been a shill for the Administration.<\/p>\n

It was Yon’s intensely critical reporting during the worst days of the pre-surge war of attrition that reportedly got him eighty-sixed from the Sean Hannity show. The Administration will no doubt not be thrilled about Yon’s current prognosis for Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

But today, he turns his scathing pen from bumbling generals and crusty Command Sergeants Major to…his fellow reporters.<\/p>\n

All describe the bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq. Knowing this disconnect exists and experiencing it directly are two separate matters. It\u2019s like the difference between holding the remote control during the telecast of a volcanic eruption on some distant island (and then flipping the channel), versus running for survival from a wretch of molten lava that just engulfed your car…No thinking person would look at last year\u2019s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has<\/em> drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either \u201cvictim caught in the crossfire\u201d or \u201creferee between warring parties.\u201d Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whatever your views on the war – right, wrong, iies, campaign to safeguard the nation – it’d take “Joe Isuzu”-level intellectual dishonesty to not figure out that things have changed, largely for the better, in Iraq in the past ten months.<\/p>\n

And yet the media are still stuck in Abu Ghraib mode.\u00a0 The other night, MPR’s lead story was about a squabble between the Army and the Iraqi Interior Ministry about civilian casualties in a disputed firefight, complete with unctuous sarcasm from the reporter during the Army’s side of the story.<\/p>\n

Did I mention he’s no cheerleader?<\/p>\n

I came to Iraq<\/a> in December 2004 specifically because friends in the military had been telling me about the disconnect between the situation on the ground and the media coverage about it. This is partly why I have remained focused enough on this problem to write about it dozens of times, beginning with an early dispatch about how many news reports \u201cfrom\u201d Iraq are generated <\/a>. Later I described the expensive and exasperating embed process <\/a>that makes long-term on-the-ground reporting next to impossible for most small or medium media outlets, and just plain impossible <\/a>for most freelancers and independents.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written about the small and petty way<\/a>s the military\u2019s Public Affairs Offices can sour even the most earnestly and positively-inclined reporters. I\u2019ve written about how the military\u2019s entire approach to media has failed<\/a> utterly to serve both the particular mission in Iraq and the greater cause of an informed and vibrant democracy. I\u2019ve written about reporters who got the story right<\/a>, about those who got it all wrong<\/a>, and also about those whose reports, good or bad, never saw the light of day<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the villain in this <\/em>report sits in a corner office on Broadway:<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t until I spent that week back in the States that I realized how bad things have gotten. I believe we are witnessing a conspiracy of coincidences conflating to exert an incomprehensibly destructive force on the free press system that we largely take for granted. The fact that the week in question also happened to be when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were delivering their reports to Congress makes me wonder if things are actually worse than I\u2019ve assessed, and I returned to Iraq sadly convinced that General Petraeus now has to deal from a deck clearly stacked against him in both America and Iraq.<\/p>\n

Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour. Why wouldn\u2019t they? The cloned copy they get comes from the same sources that list the specials at the local grocery store, and the hours and locations of polling places for town elections. These same news sources print obituaries and birth announcements, give play-by-play for local high school sports, and chronicle all the painful details of the latest celebrity to fall from grace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, finally, he’s got a plan, and needs your help.<\/p>\n

So read the whole thing, and warm up your phone and keyboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Yon is pissed. Yon’s been in Iraq covering the war as a freelance embed for almost three years now.\u00a0 As a rigid independent – unbeholden to either the administration or the media’s agenda – he’s not ever been a shill for the Administration. It was Yon’s intensely critical reporting during the worst days of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}