Soldiers’ stories enhance understanding of Iraq

[thedrifter]

Ombudsman:
Soldiers’ stories enhance understanding of Iraq
By Joseph Ungaro, Stars and Stripes ombudsman
Mideast edition, Wednesday, March 15, 2006

This is the second in a series of four columns based on a study of coverage by Stars and Stripes of the situation in the Middle East.

I divided Stripes’ coverage of our troops in Iraq in two categories. The first was to determine if there was a positive side to the coverage in the face of the constant refrain of bombings and attacks. As an extensive reader of U.S. newspapers and watcher of TV news, I had not seen much coverage beyond the latest breaking news and what it meant.

The second was the degree to which Stripes has been able to provide coverage of “what life is like” on the ground for American military personnel. This historically has been an important role for Stripes.

For the first category, my tearsheets showed that Stripes started slowly, with one story a week in October, and then published an average of 2.3 a week for the next four months. I found that the quality of reporting and writing was high. Some of the very best included:

¶ A series of stories by Steve Mraz, Anita Powell and Jeff Schogol on the medical revolution that help war wounded survive.

¶ “Two-of-a-kind and a full house are all that is left of the deck” — an update by Anita Powell that reported on the capture so far of 45 of Iraq’s 55 most wanted former Baathists.

¶ “Iraqis ‘save the day’ in attack that hurt newsman” by Nancy Montgomery, with a companion story by Mraz on how troops wounded in IED attacks garner little media attention.

¶ “Kirkuk combats corrupt police, wayward force” — a story at the end of November by Powell on the plan by the police chief, Maj. Gen. Sherko, with the help of the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, for a point-driven system that he hopes will bring accountability to the unruly police department.

¶ “Troops find huge weapon cache while patrolling in western Iraq.”

¶ “Marines seeking to establish viable police force in Karmah” — in which Andrew Tilghman reported: “‘We say this is a counterinsurgency, but in many ways this is really about countering crime,’ [Capt. Joel] Schmidt [company commander who overseas Karmah] said.”

¶ A series of stories by Erik Slavin on the efforts of U.S. military personnel to help build the Iraqi army.

¶ A story by Slavin on what it is like to be a Humvee gunner and the gunners’ thoughts on a new shield.

Of the above stories, I saw coverage on only two in the American press. Making the road from Baghdad to the airport safer appeared in several papers.

For the second category — what life is like for military personnel on the ground — Stripes published an average of 1.5 stories a week through the five months.

These stories and others constitute quality journalism done under challenging circumstances:

¶ “Back on his feet; Marine shaken but not deterred by IED” — a very moving story by Monte Morin about Marine Gunnery Sgt. Michael Burghardt, whose business is hunting down and defusing roadside bombs.

¶ Powell’s report: “Female GI: I’m just here to do my job; At 20 women to 1,000 men, female soldiers hold their own at Forward Operating Base McHenry.”

¶ “U.S. Army holding down an old fortress in Iraq” — Tilghman writes about a base situated on an old trading route that led merchants and smugglers from Baghdad through Baqoubah and into Iran and is an obvious location for a military outpost.

¶ “The bare-bones life at ‘O-P Three’” — Tilghman writes: “Lance Cpl. Aaron Snell was eagerly devouring his Thursday morning breakfast, the only hot meal served each week at this small outpost, known here only as ‘O-P Three,’ just a few miles east of Fallujah.”

¶ “Dozens of soldiers find time for faith downrange” — Tilghman writes: “[O]n this Sunday, near Baqoubah, Iraq, dozens of soldiers came together, laid down their weapons in makeshift pews, and settled in for a two-hour gospel service that offered a break from daily duties in the battle-scarred and sun-baked desert.”

¶ “Iraq border outpost chef prepares meals with zeal” — Morin reports from Sinjar, Iraq: “Call it Sgt. Smith’s Border Grill. In a small, weather-beaten fort overlooking the Syrian border, 23-year-old James Smith is living his dream of owning a small home-style restaurant. The only trouble is, his customers eat for free.”

¶ “Troops in Iraq give thanks, get away from the war for a bit” — Morin reports from Baghdad: “Perhaps not since the days of Saddam Hussein has the Green Zone’s ‘Four Heads Palace’ seen as lavish a banquet as the one prepared for U.S. troops here on Thanksgiving.”

¶ “Marines’ turkey day mission: A television” — Tilghman writes from Husaybah, Iraq: “Here in this dusty Syrian border town, turkey day took a back seat to television and satellite dish shopping as the focus of Thanksgiving Day, as one platoon of Marines went into the city’s bustling market place to find a key creature comfort for their newly assembled home.”

¶ “‘One day we will be like brothers.’ Iraqi known as ‘Alf’ forges friendships with Americans, forgives wrongful Abu Ghraib detention” — a fascinating story by Morin about Aouf “Alf” Hasoon, who works at his market in Forward Operation Base Tiger in Sinjar, Iraq. The interpreter began working with Tiger Squadron during the 2003 invasion and returned to the unit this year, even after he was wrongfully detained at Abu Ghraib prison for eight months.

The next column will deal with Stripes’ efforts to cover what life is like for Iraqis and how they are coping.

Send comments to Joe Ungaro at: Ombudsman, Stars and Stripes, 529 14th St. NW, Suite 350, Washington, D.C. 20045-1301. Phone civilian +1(401) 364-6032; fax +1(401) 364-8696; or e-mail ombudsman@stripes.osd.mil.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Ombudsman:
War coverage, from a distinct perspective
By Joseph Ungaro, Stars and Stripes ombudsman
Mideast edition, Tuesday, March 14, 2006

This is the first of four columns on a study of coverage by Stars and Stripes of the situation in the Middle East.

Just after Labor Day an e-mail from a major in the U.S. Army to the editorial director of Stripes was forwarded to me. The e-mail expressed frustration with the lack of positive news coming out of Iraq.

He wrote: “I hear a constant drumbeat of complaints that the paper emphasizes the negative in reporting on GWOT (Global War on Terror), particularly with regard to Iraq. … There are also a dearth of positive stories about Iraq in the paper.”

I was in the middle of another project, but I wrote back: “You raise an interesting question about coverage in Iraq. As soon as I finish a study I’m doing on the opinion pages, I will do a three-month in-depth look at the coverage of Iraq by Stripes.” After the first few weeks, I broadened it to include Afghanistan.

I ended up comparing coverage over five months — October, November, December, January and February. I compared the Stripes coverage to that of three U.S. national newspapers, a metropolitan paper in the state in which I reside and a “small town” newspaper published for the area in which I reside.

My approach was to read every story on Iraq and Afghanistan, make notes and tear out stories for further future comparisons.

That was the easy part. The next step was determining: What could be learned from this mass of information?

My first reaction was: This is a war, but a different kind of war, different even from Vietnam. There is no “front line.” There is no clearly defined enemy. There may be several enemies who sometimes have the same motive and sometimes have different motives.

It can best be described as a political insurgency.

The news stories paint a picture of the war in Iraq as an irregular series of attacks by suicide bombers in cars/trucks and/or in person, hit-and-run mortar attacks and explosive devices planted along roads.

During the five-month period I examined, those attacks and the process of elections leading to the formation of a government in Iraq clearly dominated the news about Iraq in Stripes as well as the U.S. newspapers. As part of its mission, Stripes uses wire service stories in reasonable lengths to provide the core of the news about the war.

But the heart of Stripes’ mission historically has been to report to its military audience not only “the war” but the successes and failures the military — its readers — are achieving in waging that war.

During the period of the study, Stripes had, on a rotating basis, two to four reporters embedded with the troops in Iraq and one to two in Afghanistan. And the plan is to increase the numbers with the troops to six.

The embedding of reporters with the troops has been a major positive for Stripes coverage. My review of the stories coming out of both Iraq and Afghanistan shows it has made possible the kind of in-depth reporting the major was seeking.

This study focused on five questions:
Have the opinions of reporters and news executives shown through the Stripes coverage?
To what degree has Stripes been able to provide “a balance” to the daily attacks that are part of this different kind of war?
To what degree has Stripes been able to provide coverage of “what life is like” on the ground for American military personnel?
To what degree has Stripes been able to provide coverage of “what life is like” for Iraqi civilians?
And how does coverage of Afghanistan fit into the Stripes approach?

This column will address the first question. Subsequent columns this week will address the other questions.

The easy question was: Were the opinions of the reporters and news executives showing through the Stripes coverage? Definitely not, contrary to what is going on at many American newspapers, where more and more reporters feel they must provide analysis of every daily development. I did not find a single story written by a Stripes staffer that reflected an opinion or used unnamed sources. Unnamed sources always raise these questions in my mind: Who was the source and why was he or she chosen?

There were at least three points over the five months where stories in newspapers in the U.S. speculated that “bombing” was a precursor of a civil war about to happen between the Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The latest was the bombing of the mosques last month.

Typical was this Associated Press story published in Stripes in October. It began: “The Bush administration and the U.S. military are looking for victory against a stubborn insurgency, 2½ years after the first bomb fell on Baghdad. Yet even more members of Congress and the American public are looking for a way out.”

The first paragraph of the story represents opinions of the reporter. The news was the last two paragraphs of the story:

“Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who recently returned from a visit to Iraq, said the key problem is that the Iraq government still doesn’t have the capacity to run the country.

“‘The military leaders will tell you this battle is not going to be won by military force, it’s a political struggle like every insurgency,’ said Reed. ‘We can buy time and create an environment, but if you don’t have the civilian experts, who can talk about reconstruction, political activity, education reform, then we’re not going to improve people’s lives.’”

And as I was writing this column, a Navy retiree with 28 years of service sent an e-mail questioning why Stripes published a story on a Zogby poll that said a survey of U.S. troops in Iraq finds that 72 percent want to withdraw within a year.

In the case of the Zogby poll, Dave Mazzarella, editorial director of Stripes, responded: “First, I can understand your concern over publication of the Zogby poll and its purported findings among troops in the Mideast. We also had concerns, realizing the difficulty of doing surveys in the war zones. We also found the results difficult to understand because of the ambiguity of some of the wording.

“We noted also that the poll results were already in media circulation. The news was on cable television, at least one wire service and several large newspapers, including the New York Times. It also was cited in the Pentagon’s ‘Morning Report’ which makes note of the most important stories of the day for DoD officials.

“It seemed to us that we should carry the story, but add information of our own to give the readers more perspective. This we did by talking to experts on the poll’s meaning, resulting in the line in our story: ‘But policy experts differ on exactly what those numbers mean.’ We quoted a military analysis as saying, ‘I think this is about personal circumstances and not proof there is a higher rate of troops who desire departure.’

“We also sought information about who commissioned the poll. Although we couldn’t use names, we did note that it was ‘an anti-war activist,’ indicating to our readers that there apparently was a political motivation behind the project.”

I totally agree with the response. I included the question and answer because it is an issue readers very frequently write to the ombudsman and Stripes about.

Part of the responsibility of Stripes is to tell its readers what the rest of the media are reporting on major issues of the day. The alternative of not publishing would be read by some as censorship by Stripes.

In the case of the major’s query, the burden is put on Stripes and its reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan to search out and report on those activities that complement the news coverage and provide a fuller dimension of the activities of the military. How Stripes is coping with that challenge will be reviewed in subsequent columns.

Send comments to Joe Ungaro at: Ombudsman, Stars and Stripes, 529 14th St. NW, Suite 350, Washington, D.C. 20045-1301. Phone civilian +1(401) 364-6032; fax +1(401) 364-8696; or e-mail ombudsman@stripes.osd.mil.