Monday, March 24, 2008
Perspectives: Get It Right, Do the Work [Steve Schippert]
It's the Energizer Bunny of bad reporting. The headlines just keep coming, and coming, and coming.
Perhaps a brief history lesson is in order. McCain's statement about Iran supporting Shi'a militias and al-Qaeda in Iraq was not a gaffe, despite being labeled one by just about every media outlet that has covered the story.
It's no different from, nor unrelated to, the widely disseminated assertion that Saddam's Iraq had "no ties" to al-Qaeda. Both statements are bogus. Both are lazy. And both, more often than not, consciously or unconsciously, result from politically motivated preconceptions that are wrong but difficult to dispel in the minds of the irretrievably convinced.
This, as it has always been, is bad news for the American news consumer - especially those with little time for much more than headlines and a paragraph or two. And that, through a misinformed and ill-informed general public, wreaks havoc on national security through an electorate that remains - as a whole - in a dangerous state of awareness.
The job of distilling major reports that are too lengthy and time-consuming for most to digest in full still falls largely on the established media. Yet the media's sorry secret is that precious few among them do actually read and distill the major works, such as the recent Iraqi Perspectives Report. Most often, reporters scan the executive summary, latch onto a passage that fits their particular personal idiom, and craft a column peppered with almost random background notes and the names of the political figures of choice. (When's the last time you read an article on any topic involving Iraq that did not mention President Bush?)
Last December's National Intelligence Estimate, and the accompanying swarm of reportage that Iran had "halted its nuclear weapons program," is another prime example of grabbing one line of the executive summary and running recklessly forward without reading the whole document, parts of which conflicted with the summary. Its wording was - in my view intentionally - a logical minefield meant precisely to garner the media blitz it indeed commanded. But the bit that fits a reporter's particular personal idiom is the bit that sits atop the headlines for weeks.
All of which, of course, is avoidable. While this doesn't apply to all of them by any stretch, many journalists need to resume the profession of journalism and abandon the more prevalent practice of diarism.
Here's a starting point. Before anyone writes another word on the Iraq Perspectives Project report, read it.
The five volumes of the document, linked below, documents the history of the Saddam regime.
The Institute for Defense Analyses produced the report under contract for the command as part of the broader Iraqi Perspectives Project.
The Iraqi Perspectives Project examines operational and strategic insights and lessons from the perspective of former senior Iraqi decision-makers through the analysis of primary source material such as interviews and captured regime documents.
The study’s authors completed the report after screening more than 600,000 captured documents including several hundred hours of audio and video files archived by U.S. Department of Defense.
As part of USJFCOM, JCOA studies strategic and operational lessons from recent and ongoing military operations in order to improve the joint force.
Volume 1 contains the executive summary of the report. Volumes 2-5 provide supporting documentations.
Click on the links below to download each volume individually.
• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Volume 3
• Volume 4
• Volume 5
Far too many prominent journalists write on this subject from the very edge of their understanding. With respect to news articles about December's NIE and March's Iraq Perspectives Project report on Iraq's links to terrorism, I remain convinced that many of the articles contain more words written by the journalists than they actually bothered to read in the respective reports. That is, by definition, the inverse of distilling. And it is irresponsible.
Stop talking long enough to listen, and stop typing long enough to read.
Get it right. Do the work.
03/24 10:36 AM
Share
