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Flacks and Hacks in Baghdad

What it's like to report from Iraq.

Dec 15, 2003, Vol. 9, No. 14 • By NOAH D. OPPENHEIM
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BAGHDAD IS A GIFT to the cynical. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has erected miles of concrete blast barriers along major roads. Every entrance to the "Green Zone" is barricaded behind sandbags, razor wire, and at least one parked tank. Checkpoints, fortifications, large guns--the trappings of occupation are unavoidably ugly, and, in Iraq, little has been done to beautify them. It is no wonder then that so many reporters, finding their worst suspicions confirmed during the ride from the airport, never see past the cement walls.

Four weeks ago, MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" asked me to go to Baghdad in search of the story most of the mainstream media were missing. The network's vice president knew I was a supporter of the war, and suggested I find out if things had really gone as horribly wrong as the evening newscasts and major print dailies reported. What I found is that, in Iraq, the mounting body count is heartbreaking, but the failure of American journalism is tragic.

First, some popular illusions that need to be dispelled: Most correspondents for newscasts do very little, if any, actual reporting. They assemble the visual elements of a jigsaw puzzle whose shape is dictated by an unholy deity--"the wires." Every day, the Associated Press and Reuters offer an account of the major events in Iraq. If a bomb has exploded or an American soldier has been killed, that is the day's major event. Barring that, an alarming comment from an American official, like Ambassador Paul Bremer or General Ricardo Sanchez, will suffice.

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