…And the war-blogger that intends to do something about itApparently, the world believed U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid when he told them that the Iraq war was already lost. This comes as no surprise considering that the mainstream media has been working tirelessly to prove Reid’s point with article after article depicting death and hatred for the U.S. mission in Iraq. But now that sectarian deaths are down by 70% and violence as a whole down 80%, the drive-by media is no longer stacking the front pages and leading their news casts with news from Iraq.
Reports from Iraq have slowed to a virtual trickle.
A point that has been being made by media critics for some time is that the MSM reports only the stories and only in the manner that jibes with its ideological slant. The sudden, dramatic improvement in the war and corresponding lack of reporting of it in the MSM is yet the latest benchmarking of this radical theory.
The MSM’s bias towards the idea that Iraq is Bush’s folly gave them advantage in reporting on events over there - so long as events met their expectation of failure. It now appears that the corner has been turned in relation to the broad goal of stabilizing the country so that the specific goal of allowing the central government to begin taking over the job of security. As a result, the MSM has no real motivation to constantly inform its customers on Iraq.
In another day and age, that would be the end of the story. But the informational marvel that is the Internet has offered Americans and the world many more options.
Enter: Michael Yon
Michael Yon has been reporting from Iraq, both as a reader-sustained independent journalist and as a correspondent for The Weekly Standard. Mr. Yon’s daring-do-style reporting has brought him perilously close to death (like the time he had to break military rules and shoot his way out of an ambush while on a mission with the 1-24th Infantry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division) and even closer to the truth about what is happening in Iraq.
From is blog at www.michaelyon-online.com, Michael Yon dispenses “dispatches” filled with compelling photography as well as commentary and observations taken from his rigorous participation on missions with the units he is embedded with. Having visited the U.S. in between imbed assignments, Michael realized that as events on the ground turn the corner towards improvement, fewer and fewer reports about Iraq are appearing in the evening news and the front pages of the newspapers. It would seem, Yon surmises, that as the I.E.D. explosions decrease and body counts fall, it becomes increasingly difficult to fill a 850 word article. As a result, many in the the media have simply gone A.W.O.L. in Iraq.Michael Yon asks the question; If not them, how about me? If the wire services are unable or unwilling to put the boots on the ground necessary to get to the real story in Iraq, why shouldn’t he provide the same content to readers of newspapers that he gives to the readers of his blog. Or some appropriate portion thereof? Michael Yon has offered to partner with subscribers of the National Newspaper Association to provide, free of charge, proportional content from his dispatches from the front lines of the War in Iraq. According to his website, NNA members will be able to
” . . . print excerpts of Michael Yon’s dispatches, including up to two of his photographs from each dispatch. Online excerpts may use up to 8 paragraphs, use 1-3 photos, and then link back to the full dispatch on his site saying ‘To continue reading, click here.’”
Since this will be at no cost to the subscribing newspaper, there is no way the newspapers can say they don’t have this sort of thing in their budgets. Yon adds
By encouraging their local daily or weekly newspapers to reprint these dispatches in their print editions, more people without Internet access can begin to see a more accurate reflection of the progress [he has] observed and chronicled.
Imagine the kudos for innovation your local paper would receive if it launched a section named something like “Michael Yon Reports For the Front Lines In Iraq”. At zero cost to the paper, they could toss it into the editorial section and see how the feedback is before they (the paper’s publishers) jump in with both feet.
Please write to your local newspaper(s). Let them know that you are supportive of the idea that Michael Yon has proposed. If the mainstream media reporting in Iraq has been dwindling at the exact same rate as improvements on Iraq, someone needs to be called in to report on those improvements.
Kevin D. Korenthal blogs at www.socalpundit.com and is a political activist residing with his wife and 3 children in Santa Clarita, CA, a suburb of Los Angeles County.
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