Reporting From Iraq: Why The Quality Of News Is Going Downhill

by On The Media (repost)

Sun, Oct 10, 2004 3:50PM

First-hand accounts from the war zone are the raw material of journalism, but context and analysis are just as important for those of us at home trying to make sense of the situation. And with correspondents on the ground in Iraq increasingly hampered by the risk to their own skins, there's less and less for experts here to work with. Brooke speaks with one of the Internet's most widely-read Iraq analysts, University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole.

Listen
http://www.wnyc.org/stream/ram.py?file=raotm/otm100804b.ra

§No Bloody News

by OTM

Sat, Oct 16, 2004 12:15PM

BOB GARFIELD: But do we see it every single day? It turns out, less and less. In fact, according to the Tyndall Report, which tracks the minutes network news spends each night on various issues, the time spent on Iraq is inversely proportional to the violence there. Before Iraq was handed over to the Iraqis at the end of June, there were between 40 and 50 attacks a day. The minutes devoted to covering them on the networks' evening news -461 in April, 474 in May, 305 in June. In August, a month of unprecedented violence, only 164 minutes were devoted to the conflict. By September, attacks had doubled to 80 a day, 2,368 over 30 days. Time spent on network coverage -- a paltry 205 minutes. Recently, we've heard something of the terrible violence in Samarra, but we haven't seen it. Of course, on Thursday, when there was a rocket attack on a Baghdad hotel that caused no serious injuries, we were treated to wall to wall coverage. That's because the hotel houses foreigners and journalists, and the cameras were already there. [TAPE PLAYS]

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http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_100804_nonews.html

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