Monday, October 22, 2007

Misperceptions: A Parallel Universe   [Steve Schippert]

Michael Yon is a man who has spent more time reporting on the ground in Iraq than many American journalists have spent in their own newsrooms. He has spent more time embedded within military units in Iraq than perhaps even some entire news organizations' rosters. And he also, without fail, gives fair treatment to other journalists in Iraq without knee-jerk criticism or rant. So when he voices anger and frustration over the unconscionable disparity between media-driven misperceptions in America and the actual situation on the ground in Iraq, it would be far from fair or right to dismiss him as some uneven blogger trying to sell the war.

His criticism warrants your time and, more importantly, the time and consideration of editors and journalists in the American media.

[A gulf, a gap, a chasm, a parallel universe...] 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’s 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.

I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.

No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has 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 “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.

Yon — and those who believe in the importance of what he has been doing — seeks to grow the reach of his efforts and make his dispatches from the field more accessible and more widely available. Read through Michael Yon's latest and you may well feel compelled to assist.

10/22 08:47 AMShare