How the other half lives

Today I went to lunch at "Freedom Rest," the area near the Green Zone where many high-ranking generals live and where soldiers get to take breaks for a few days at a time. It was amazing. There was a gorgeous swimming pool, ping-pong tables everywhere, several cabinets full of the latest DVDs, a movie theater playing new releases, a sports bar (but no alcohol, since soldiers and officers aren't allowed to drink it), a bowling alley and more. I was with a bunch of people meeting with a general in a high-ceilinged, lavishly decorated conference room.

I knew it was going to be a good day when I walked in the conference room and saw a line of a dozen silver serving dishes. A crew of waiters pulled off the covers to reveal fresh vegetables, Chinese noodles, chicken and broccoli, egg drop soup and much more. I was in heaven. I ate orange chicken, noodles, rice, stir fried eggplant, soup and a chocolate chip cookie, which was all delightful. The reporters in the room were saying that it's very easy for the military to get good coverage in Iraq -- just give them good food. Everybody laughed, but there's a definite element of truth to it.

It was only a couple of hours later that I realized the food wasn't actually all that good -- it was comparable to the Chinese food you'd eat in a mall food court, which I would generally scoff at. But in Iraq, those gloppy noodles and cloyingly sweet chicken tasted pretty amazing.

21st century barbarism

I never read editorials. I don't like that a group of people sitting in an office can shape the direction of the country by writing about places they've never been and people they've never spoken to. That said, I read today's Washington Post editorial about Iraq because it was the most-read story on the web site, and I felt compelled to link to it here.

I actually can't decide what I think about this piece on its merits. The only conclusion seems to be that the situation is bad in Baghdad, which anybody could have told you. But despite -- or maybe because of -- its lack of recommendations, I found it particularly powerful.

"ONE REASON the debate over Iraq can seem so perplexing at times is that the nature of the violence can be so horrendous as to be nearly unfathomable. The inexcusable killing of civilians by insurgents and militias is so common as to go almost unremarked upon. But four simultaneous truck-bomb explosions in one small community in northwestern Iraq on Tuesday night, all directed against defenseless civilians, provided a savage and jarring reminder."

Despite the fact that this writer has never been to Iraq, he managed to capture some pretty common sentiments among the people I interact with here. There's no difference other than scale between this attack and the ones that happen every day within a five-minute's drive of my office. But despite the fact that it's 250 miles away from here, this one feels particularly sobering.

In looking for the ways to solve Iraq, it always seems to be the people with the least information that have the loudest voices. My inbox is filling up again with e-mails from people saying everything from "that moron Bush needs to pull out right now!" to "stupid liberals need to stop supporting the enemy." And of course, those of us on the ground know that basically all of those people are wrong, because none of the answers here are simple. I'm glad an editorial acknowledged that for once.

The daily miracle

Journalists often refer to a published newspaper as "the daily miracle" -- meaning, of course, that it's a miracle the thing comes out every day. I got to see that concept epitomized last night at The Washington Post's office in Baghdad.

The Post had filed a story around 9:30 p.m. leading with a truck bomb attack on a bridge on the outskirts of Baghdad and also reporting four American soldiers killed in combat and the kidnapping of the country's deputy oil minister in Baghdad. At 11 p.m., they received an e-mail saying five additional troops had died in a helicopter crash in Anbar province. Nine soldiers dead in one day is pretty significant, so the reporter decided to update the story to lead with that information. Around the same time, a stringer up north called to say that 20 people had been killed in a series of car bomb attacks near the village of Sinjar, around the Syrian border. By Iraq standards, 20 is not that many, so the reporter chose to slip in two paragraphs near the middle of the article.

Then all hell broke loose. The first indication that more than 20 people had died in the car bombings came via a TV breaking news alert. Like I've said here before, Iraqi TV stations have a tendency to announce blatantly wrong information, so this wasn't necessarily true, but it was worth checking. But then the phone rang again: at least 175 dead. The reporters, totally unprepared for this, sprang into action.

The villages where these bombings took place, small enclaves of Yazidi people, do their best to be disconnected from the outside world. There is no internet access for 100 miles around and most of the people don't have phones. The nearest Post stringer was in Mosul, the closestlarge city, with no way of getting to the area. The reporters were starting to think they'd have to print a boring, "according to the Iraqi Army" story with no witness quotes. They were working on gathering context and updating death tolls, adrenaline pumping, holding out a glimmer of hope that the stringer might find someone to talk to.

I still don't totally understand how it happened, but around 3 a.m. the stringer called, saying he had gotten in touch with a man in his hospital bed in the nearest town. The man explained what had happened to him and said he didn't know where his family was. The stringer tracked down one other witness who added supporting details. The result was a string of heart-breaking quotes that created a dynamic front-page article. And although the lead byline (and thus most of the credit) went to the American reporter, it was the stringer and a translator who deserve it.

Making it even better, The New York Times, the Post's chief rival on Iraq stories (and everything else) managed to get only the official side of the story -- no witness quotes, no glimpse into what it was like to be there. The Post story is here; the Times' is here -- notice a difference? It prompted a Post editor to e-mail the reporters the following message:

"on a story of global importance you got the best story in the world... congrats. good feeling, huh?"

That, my friends, is the daily miracle. I could get into this whole journalism thing.

This American Life

This post has nothing to do in Iraq, except that this is a discovery I made when we were trapped in the house for four days last week because of a total vehicle curfew for a Shiite pilgrimage. I think I may be the last person I know to discover This American Life, and JFR/IVK/MHG/SEK/CPR have certainly done their fair share of telling me to start listening to it, but it took me until last week. Now, of course, I'm totally obsessed.

For the other people out there who live under a rock like me, This American Life is a public radio program that is produced in Chicago* every week. The basic structure is that they take a theme and record a series of "acts" about that theme. These are usually people talking about life experiences, but occasionally there's fiction involved (in my opinion, the non-fiction parts are so much better). All of the past episodes are available for free on their web site. It's a totally addicting way to spend an hour.

If you've never heard the show or just aren't a regular listener, here's a list of my favorites to start with. Most of them are about seemingly mundane themes, but they're fantastic. I've probably only heard about 15 episodes, so if you're a junkie too, tell me your favorites!

Notes on Camp: Stories about the kinds of camps that become a huge part of kids' identities. I went to a couple of different camps as a kid but never had the classic experience of going back year after year (and now I get jealous when OFH tells stories!), so I lived vicariously through this program.

Somewhere in the Arabian Sea: All about life in a war zone... sort of. Stories about people living on an aircraft carrier during the War on Terror. The first act is about the woman who stocks the ship's vending machines, who has only seen the outside world once in the several months she's been onboard. Plus, there's a totally hilarious interview with a guy who joined the military instead of going to jail.

Classifieds: Stories culled from one day's classified ads. Ever wondered about why somebody is selling their brand-new Mercedes or what that crazy personal ad means? Me too. Listen.

Recordings for Someone: A must-hear if you went to CU, it's the story about the most famous ROLM phone message ever! Totally hilarious, with some more serious but no less valuable stuff toward the end.

The Ten Commandments: A sometimes funny, often poignant look at the 10 Commandments, with a different story for each one. Everything from an examination of "Thou shall not kill" in a war zone to a tale of a 10-year-old boy who can't take his own name in vain.

*Update! IVK's mommy informs me that This American Life has moved to New York, which is tremendously sad because I have never been to Chicago and liked learning things about it from Ira. And let's be honest, as much as I love New York, it has a bratty tendency to hog all the good stuff. But I'm confused, because the TAL homepage still says "Chicago Public Radio Presents" in big blue letters at the top. Chicago people and Ira loyalists, explain please.

p.s. Is the tv show any good?

Good reads today

Iraq coverage in the major dailies is good reading on Sundays. Most of the time I read only as much Iraq-related journalism as I have to (which, admittedly, is a lot), but some of the Sunday stuff is too good to miss. The Washington Post has two Iraq-related enterprise stories today. The first is about the GI Bill's inability to keep pace with college tuition, which is a major problem for people coming back from Iraq. Most of the soldiers I meet here are between 18 and 22, and although many of them don't have college plans the GI Bill allows them to keep their options open. The story is here.

The second Post story is more directly about Iraq itself -- a look at the dwindling artists' community in Baghdad. People used to consider Baghdad the Paris of the Arab world, but an estimated 90 percent of artists have left the country (or been killed). There are some interesting characters in the story, both people who have chosen to leave and those who have stayed. The story is here.

The New York Times has a big political story in the Sunday magazine, but I didn't make it past the first few paragraphs. The Post has an opinion piece written by an anonymous dentist in Iraq, but I already know that Baghdad can be a depressing place to live, so I skipped that one too. They're both linked if you're interested.

Iraqi media

Here's the thing about Iraqi television stations: they make things up. Some of you more cynical types might think that the U.S. media does the same, but you're wrong.

Today a member of our Iraqi staff saw on a breaking news ticker at the bottom of the newscast that there was a massive protest against the government downtown. We thought this was a bit strange, especially since it was after curfew. A friend of A's lives in that neighborhood, so we called him. He was in the middle of enjoying a nice, quiet dinner with his wife. There was no protest outside, he assured us.

Okay, but maybe it was on the next street over and he just couldn't hear it. We decided to call the police station in that neighborhood, which is centrally located. The desk clerk laughed when he heard the question. "You know it's past curfew, right?" he asked A. "Well, yes, but it was on al-Shariqiya, so we figured we should check," A replied.

The officer laughed. Loudly.

"You get your news from Shariqiya?" he said. "You know they make it all up, right?"

A must-read

I'm totally exhausted from the soccer madness today, so I'll let somebody else do the talking: Steve Fainaru, a Washington Post investigative reporter (and 2006 Pulitzer Prize finalist), has a phenomenal in-depth look at a private security contractor that was working in Baghdad until last spring. Five guards were kidnapped last November, which Fainaru conclusively shows was the result of poor training, mismanagement and bad decision-making. Private security is a huge, multi-billion-dollar industry in Iraq, and I can't believe Crescent is the only company making these types of dumb choices. The full article is here; part two runs tomorrow.

Money quotes include:

"Schneider oversaw Crescent's security operations for more than two years, despite having pleaded guilty, according to court records, to misdemeanor charges of breaking and entering and domestic violence in Michigan in the mid-1990s."

"Crescent crafted its own military identification badges to enable its employees -- including unscreened Iraqis -- to gain admittance to U.S. bases."

"Reuben, the company medic, was a self-described alcoholic who was not certified as an emergency medical technician and had resigned as a suburban Minneapolis police officer in 2003 after a drunk-driving violation."

Thoughts on Khalid

Khalid W. Hassan, an Iraqi reporter for The New York Times, was killed Friday morning as he drove to work. His murder came the day after an Iraqi photographer and driver for Reuters were killed. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 110 reporters--the vast majority of them Iraqi--have been killed since the war began.

From all accounts, including from the people I work with, Khalid was one of the good guys. My boss recalls him laughing and joking at public events, showing people the coolest new feature of his cell phone and talking about his family. He was the sole breadwinner for his mother and four sisters, and he was planning to marry his girlfriend. He was 23 years old.

I'm only beginning to understand how dangerous it is for Iraqi reporters working for American media companies. They are seen as traitors and as supporters of the American military. Objective journalism has had no role in Iraq, and the concept of doing it "for the Americans" often is not understood. It's unclear whether Khalid was specifically targeted for his job as a reporter, but it seems likely.

Reporters here are told to lie to their friends and family about what they do during the day, to vary their route to work, not to leave at the same time two days in a row. Many of them will not have their names printed in the paper, even on stories they wrote, because of the fear that somebody will find out. And still, there's a community of journalists in Iraq who are inspired by the power of the written word, who get a rush out of reporting, who admire the work of organizations like The New York Times and The Washington Post so much that they will risk their lives to be a part of it.

Rest in peace, Khalid.

Hotel journalism

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the concept of what some have dubbed "hotel journalism," press critics' term for what they see as lazy reporting in Iraq and other places. Instead of going out and getting the story, the accusation goes, reporters sit in their improvised newsrooms letting Iraqi stringers do the real work while the Westerners take the credit. Most recently, one of my hazardous duty training instructors grilled me in our hotel bar about why American journalists are in Iraq at all. "They're not doing the first-hand reporting anyway," he said. "Wouldn't it be easier for all involved if they just compiled their Iraqi staff's feeds sitting in D.C. instead of in a walled compound in Baghdad?"

Perhaps not surprisingly, the criticism generally comes from overtly partisan people. Do you think the left-wing media is being too tough on Bush and his administration? It's probably because reporters aren't actually experiencing all the positive work going on. If you think major media outlets are the lapdogs of the neocons, blame it on the fact that they don't see all the real danger in Iraq. Experienced reporters hear it constantly from both sides. And as someone with more first-hand experience than any of those partisan bloggers, I know for a fact that they're wrong. There isn't a lazy American reporter in Iraq, nor one who has a political agenda. Contrary to popular belief, American reporters don't live in the Green Zone or receive protection from the military.

Yet the idea of hotel journalism still gnaws at me constantly. The reality of the situation in Iraq is that reporters often can't do their own reporting from the streets. It's not laziness, it's common sense; an American wandering through Sadr City, for example, would surely be killed. When reporters do go out, it's with bodyguards, translators and an armored vehicle. We all take risks to go to Iraq, but we must make sure they're calculated ones. Sometimes even a great story isn't worth it, and that's a difficult thing for a hard-nosed journalist to accept. This can be troubling: does the need to avoid so many areas mean the American press isn't getting the whole story?

Former UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Dean Orville Schell is emphatic in his argument that reporters are doing an admirable job under the circumstances. "But while Western journalists are relying on surrogates, what I observed at the bureaus I visited in Baghdad was far from a dereliction of duty," he wrote last year in the New York Review of Books. "If anything, it showed how the old overseas bureau model of independent reporters has been forced to evolve under very extreme pressure to survive."(Full article is pasted here; scroll down a bit to see the top)

I am constantly inspired by journalists who manage to capture stories of life in Iraq under the pressure Schell describes (one of my recent favorites is here). I know hating on the mainstream press is trendy on both sides of the aisle, but I think reasonable people must concede these guys are doing the best they can.