The No-Good-News-Reported-In-Iraq Paradox
What kind of logic is this?
How can people in one breath complain that there is not enough of the good news being reported in Iraq and say, in the very next breath, that it's just too unsafe for reporters to venture out of the Green Zone to report it?
I just don't get it.
I have forgotten my freshman course in logic. Is this a syllogism? Is it reductio ad absurdum?
Can someone help me out with this?
posted by Vigilante at 4/06/2006 08:00:00 AM
2 Moderated Comments:
Funny how commentators that are securely locked away from the American public in their plush Burbank studios are so confident that there is good news to report in Iraq. Until they start doing USO tours like Franken, I am disinclined to give their thoughts about "good news" in Iraq much credence ~ unless, of course, by good news, they are referring to a preceived approaching apocalypse, in which case they need to be sent back to the wingnut ward of their local institution.
Lara Logan, a war correspondent on CBS, made this point recently. She told CNN that when she asks U.S. officials for leads on upbeat stories, this is what she is told:
Oh, sorry, we can't take you to that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack. Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage.
Logan, who was speaking from Baghdad, said:
Security dominates every single thing that happens in this country. Reconstruction funds have been diverted to security. ... So how is it that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?
Her point is confirmed by Robert Callahan, a former press attache at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. In the latest issue of American Journalism Review, he writes:
We stopped taking reporters to the inaugurations of many reconstruction projects because, as we quickly learned to our dismay, publicity might invite a terrorist attack. ... We concluded that good publicity simply wasn't worth the cost in lives and damage, and we stopped advertising them.
Dick Polman (Knight Ridder)
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