USC Center on Public Diplomacy | Washington Journal

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Published: AUG 25, 2005 - 3:42PM PDT

Washington Journal
Editor-in-Chief Adam Clayton Powell, III writes on public diplomacy, politics and more from in and around Washington, D.C.

PRIORITY FOR KAREN HUGHES: GET REPORTERS OUT OF BAGHDAD
AUG 25, 2005 - 3:42PM PDT
by Adam Clayton Powell III

As Karen Hughes begins to settle into her new office, she must see that one priority for U.S. public diplomacy is to get reporters out of Baghdad.

No, not get reporters out of Iraq: Just get them out of their bureaus in the capital.

The consensus of U.S. journalists in Baghdad is that it is just too dangerous to get out into the countryside, where they could report on what is happening - good and bad. But reporting what is happening - good and bad - should provide the world with a more complete picture of what the U.S. is doing in Iraq. So it should be a goal of American policy.

Right now, the most memorable pictures from around the country come from video cameramen embedded with (or members of) the insurgency, showing bombings, beheadings and other anti-U.S. attacks of the day. The insurgents have grasped the power of the photograph, while U.S. media have largely abandoned the field, because it is too dangerous

And that danger is real, cannot be ignored and must be addressed. It has been the subject of frequent dispatches over the summer, from stories by reporters including Joe Cochrane of Newsweek to the angry memo from Hannah Allam, Knight Ridder’s Baghdad bureau chief - promptly reprinted in Jim Romenesko’s widely read column - about the danger even of going to the store to buy bottled water.

“The main obstacle we face is the severe limitation on our movement and our ability to get out and report,” said Mike Silverman, managing editor of the Associated Press, in an interview with the New York Times. “It's very confining for our staff to go into Baghdad and have to spend most of their time on the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel."

That concern was the starting point for a review of Iraq coverage by the Associated Press Managing Editors board. The APME discussion was especially important because of the power of the Associated Press: Much less familiar to the public than TV networks or national magazines, the AP, with a Baghdad staff of more than 70, is the most widely used source of Iraq coverage for newspapers and broadcasters, local and national, in the U.S. and in much of the world.

“Some editors expressed concern,” wrote reporter Katharine Seelye in the New York Times, “that a kind of bunker mentality was preventing reporters in Iraq from getting out and explaining the bigger picture beyond the daily death tolls.”

One member of the AP board expressing concern was Rosemary Goudreau, editorial page editor of the Tampa Tribune. Following the meeting she wrote a lengthy column describing the AP meeting. She also discussed the divergence of journalists’ daily reporting from accounts brought back by relatives of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have served in the military and in civilian jobs in Iraq, and she quoted one of her fellow editors in the AP meeting.

"Troops coming home are telling their friends - they're saying there's progress being made that we're not reporting," said George Stanley, managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, according to Boudreau.

Which brings us to back to Karen Hughes.

One of the priorities for public diplomacy is to get reporters out of the Palestine Hotel press center and into the field, so that they will report on what is happening around the country and that go beyond what journalists call the “bang bang” of the day.

One way to get reporters into the field safely is to have them embedded with military units. But fewer and fewer reporters are willing to become embeds, and now there are "about three dozen," according to Silverman, down from 700 two years ago. One reason: journalists’ distrust of the military (shades of Vietnam). Another: money. Insurance alone costs $25,000 for "a short stay," Boudreau writes.

But for Karen Hughes, this is a familiar problem: She certainly knows the power of getting out into the country - in her case, with candidate George Bush. She just needs to harness some of the same journalistic and competitive incentives - and some of the same logistics - to get reporters out on the road. News organizations will spend the money if they feel it's necessary to stay competitive.

One start: Every time Secretary of State Rice, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld or another government VIP travels to Iraq, the major press and photo opportunities should be as far away as possible from Baghdad’s barricaded Green Zone. Instead, put the VIP in a crowd of students at newly refurbished school in the northeast part of the country - and limit access to that one stop. That way the world’s press will have to show what is happening there, if only because of the competitive pressure to get the photos (and remarks) by the visiting VIP. Then leverage exclusives the way you do every day in Washington: If “60 Minutes” or “Prime Time Live” wants an interview with the Vice President, fine: but only in a photogenic location in Mosul, not in a sterile studio in Baghdad or Washington.

Yes, this means careful planning - just like any Presidential trip. And this means organizing secure transportation, with only short notice for Baghdad reporters. That’s long standing practice, too, for White House correspondents.

Of course, those are only for the highest-profile media events: In between, every day, a more complete picture needs to be conveyed. And that picture needs to go to local television stations and to local newspapers in town after town - not just to CBS and the Washington Post. That again is long-standing practice at the White House, where catering to local media has been honed to a fine art in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

The military has already devised a tool to do just that: the “virtual embed.” Arranged by Lt. Col. David Farlow, deputy director of public affairs at Central Command, journalists around the U.S. can get telephone access to military personnel on assignment in Iraq. That way they can learn first-hand what is happening around the country, where Baghdad-based reporters are not traveling. Because American soldiers in Iraq can now be dialed using U.S. area codes, there is not even a charge for an international telephone call.

That’s a start, but television needs pictures. For TV, the “virtual embed” program should use video satellite phones, with the service member in Iraq actually moving the camera to show the rebuilding projects that U.S. taxpayers are funding. The video embed program could begin with what is almost a cliché: linking service members in the field with TV anchors in their home towns. You can even do it live: Early morning in the U.S. is late afternoon in Iraq.

And who knows: The flow of “virtual embed” stories on the air and in print might also act as another incentive for journalists to get out of the Palestine Hotel, to get out as real embeds, to file on-scene reports. It might even catch on: Remember, the most popular feature, by far, of the CBS Evening News at its audience peak was On the Road, with Charles Kuralt.

Some might argue this is just propaganda, not journalism or public diplomacy. They’re wrong: it is an antidote to the anti-U.S. propaganda by the insurgents, propaganda which now goes unanswered because journalists are not able to see for themselves. Sending journalists to respond to propaganda is especially effective public diplomacy. Think of VOA (and CBS and NBC) using journalists to rebut fascist propaganda in World War II.

The difference today is that the fascists are targeting democracy’s reporters, to keep them from covering the news.