WHEN A REPORTER WRITES WHAT HE SEES IN IRAQ

Stars and Stripes has long been considered the voice of the United States military all across the world. And yet when Stars and Stripes reporters report on what they have witnessed with their own eyes in Iraq, they are taken to task by some readers.

Here is an explanation of such an instance as printed in Stars and Stripes http://blogs.stripes.com/blogs/readerscorner/when-reporter-writes-what-he-sees


A Feb. 10 article by a Stars and Stripes reporter, written from Iskandariyah, Iraq, inspired two letters to the editor. Both expressed shock. One writer was shocked that Stripes would publish a report that supposedly made American soldiers look bad. The other was shocked by what the soldiers did.

Reporter Michael Gisick followed GIs into an Iraqi home and recorded what happened. A woman and her teenage daughter were in the home; on the wall was a poster with the face of controversial Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. When a sergeant showed irritation at seeing the poster, the teenage girl was dirisive, her words "dripping attitude." The story said some of the soldiers and their interpreter started calling her "a bitch," and one of them cut al-Sadr's countenance from the poster.

The first letter, from Sgt. Stephen Tressler in Baghdad, accused Stripes of "smearing our troops" by reporting what the soldiers called the girl and by showing them cutting the poster. The second letter, from Sgt. James P. Hallberg, of Support Area Anaconda, Iraq, did not complain about the reporting, but criticized the actions of the U.S. party. "Is this the behavior that's going to teach Iraqis about democracy and freedom of speech?" he asked.

Reporter Gisick wrote what he saw. Should a reporter always do that? The military poses few restrictions on embedded reporters; they are told to observe security considerations but otherwise their reporting is little fettered, or should be. In practice, most reporters avoid reporting gratuitous statements or actions they encounter -- those with no context of the circumstance being covered.

What the Stripes reporter witnessed, it seems to me, had context: Troops regularly interact with Iraqis, sometimes with some tension, and they can react to such episodes. The article in question was straightforward, without characterizing the troops' actions one way or another.

I asked the Middle East bureau chief, Joe Giordono, for his take on it. "We emphasize to our reporters: write what you see, without passing judgment on it, and putting it into context," he said. "So,l ironically, we sometimes get it from both sides: readers (mainly civilian) who think that embedded reporters are limited in what they write, and readers (mainly military) who think that embeds report too much."