The Post and the Whole Picture in Iraq

Ricks believes problems in the relationship between the military and press "grow out of the fundamentally political nature of the fight. The military wants to be judged in military terms -- 'look at all the bad guys we killed, and don't forget the school our soldiers painted.' But the media, which is trained to measure the politics of a situation, knows the answer isn't killing bad guys, and may not be painting schools. It probably is providing security to the people.

"Now the Army is adjusting much more swiftly than it did during the Vietnam War. These days, I think, many commanders do understand those principles, but when they assert to reporters that they 'get it,' the reporters remember that division commanders back in 2003 and early 2004 also claimed to 'get it,' but back then were wrong. After hearing so many false assertions of progress, coming on top of a war launched on false premises, it may have become harder for journalists to recognize genuine signs of progress when or if they do occur. Once bitten, twice shy."

Readers have had many complaints about how and where stories about Iraq are displayed. Many readers complained when The Post ran results of the vote on Iraq's new constitution deep inside the paper last Oct. 26. Post editors said there were several front-page stories on the run-up to the election, predicting what happened. That didn't satisfy readers or me.

Sometimes it's the timing. Marine Col. David Lapan, a public affairs officer in Fallujah until recently, has written to me often about this.

A Post story on bombings and civilian casualties in late December brought this note from Lapan: "We have successful elections, the level of violence goes down, [Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld] announces a troop reduction, and we're treated to a front-page Post story about civilian casualties, one that is not particularly topical since the combat actions it describes happened weeks and months before. The story itself was fairly balanced. But the perception it leaves is that the Post . . . had to find something 'negative' to write about in the midst of many 'positive' developments in Iraq."

The story in question, by Ellen Knickmeyer, was fair; such stories often take months of reporting, and when they are ready, they go into the paper. Additionally, The Post had reported on troop reductions on Page 1 and the decline in violence didn't last long.

Tension can be expected between the military and the press in wartime. Lapan gave what I think is an excellent description of the cultural difference between the military and the press: "Reporters are generally idealists, trained to be skeptical (some would say cynical) and we're generally optimists and realists. Reporters are taught to question authority; we're taught to follow it."

Cori Dauber, professor of communications studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, closely monitors the media, war and terrorism. She is a research fellow at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies and writes and runs the http://rantingprofs.com/ blog.

Dauber starts off with two biases. She supports the war in Iraq and thinks The Post "is the best newspaper in the country and its Web site is 'the gold standard.' " She also said: "Post reporters get out more than anyone. The answer is not to push reporters to get out more, but to be more transparent about the limits of their reporting" and how much is done by Iraqi staff members. The Post regularly credits its Iraqi staffers in bylines and taglines.

Dauber said that "the constant rotation through Baghdad is a problem. It means reporters don't know military culture or doctrine or rank or weapons. But I completely understand the reasons why it's a necessity to rotate. But by the time they learn where the bathrooms are, they're gone."

David Hoffman, assistant managing editor for foreign news, supervises The Post's Iraq coverage. He says that the reporters who rotate in and out of Iraq "often prepare extensively, and some, like Ricks, are experts in their field."

Post reporter Steve Fainaru, who recently completed a 14-month stint in Iraq, sees it this way: "Everyone wants to read their view of the war in your story. To me the only issue is whether our stories are real or not. I never got complaints from the people who were involved in the subject matter of the stories.