Page 231 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Catapult the Media 22 1

slew of setbacks that make it difficult for them to compete with their corporate
counterparts. This has been a major problem with Progressive-Left media,
which, despite its critical unembedded reporting throughout Iraq, has been un-
able to compete with the U.S. mass media in terms of monetary resources and
national audience size. David Enders, co-founder and editor for the Baghdad
Bulletin, a weekly newspaper started by American reporters in Iraq, elaborates
more fully on the disadvantages non-corporate media face during times of war.
"Operating on a shoestring budget," Enders explains that his paper had to "run
an extremely tight ship" just to raise enough money to cover the costs of printing
the paper every week.12 Largely unrecognized by the mainstream American
press and the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, Enders and his staff
(along with other independent media networks operating throughout Iraq) were
marginalized due to their lack of "credibility." Ignored at CPA press conferences
and chastised by higher-level American military leaders in the field for lacking
"real credentials" and for throwing "impartiality" to the wind, Enders was pun-
ished for his work at Occupation Watch, an anti-occu ation, non-governmental
P,
organization and information network working in Iraq.
Reporters who file critical stories also have to worry about being detained
by the U.S. military. Ali Fadhill, Guardian reporter and winner of the Foreign
Press Association Young Journalist of the Year Award was detained in Iraq by
the U.S. after he investigated claims that millions of dollars worth of reconstruc-
tion finds controlled by the American and British government were "misused or
misappropriated." American troops told Fadhill that they were searching for
"insurgents" as they seized the videotapes from his home in Baghdad that he
was planning on using in his news program. After invading his home, American
soldiers fired shots into his bedroom where his wife and children were sleeping;
subsequently, Fadhill was detained, hooded and questioned in relation to "insur-
gent" activity.I4
Unembedded reporters are constantly in danger in Iraq, as the stories of
Richard Wild and Ali Fadhill reveal. 2005 was a particularly deadly year for
reporters, as sixty-three were killed throughout the world-twenty-four alone in
1raq.Is Enders effectively recounts the dangers of reporting from a war zone, as
his staff was forced "to contend with Kalashnikov-toting Iraqi gunmen and
lumpy U.S. troops nearly shooting them up" at ~heck~oints.'~ his reporting
In
from the Iraqi Republican Palace, Enders detailed his experiences in May of
2003, less than two months after the fall of Saddam's government: "We walk
around the grounds, wary of unexploded bombs or booby traps set by fleeing
Iraqi troops. An unexploded grenade round sits on the sidewalk near the pool
complex, which, along with the workout rooms, has been ransacked. . . . I wish I
could have seen the country before the bombing and the invasion and the loot-
ing, the sheer megalomania of it all."'7
Reporting for the Truthout news service (a major media outlet in the
American Progressive-Left media), Steve Weissman claims that U.S. forces
have failed to "protect journalists by training soldiers to recognize the difference
between rocket launchers and TV cameras," their failure to pass on information
concerning the locations of journalists in Iraq reporting away from U.S. troop