hell's kitchen

 Update:  This post was very poor editing on my part.  The link to Bingham's exposition is no longer available.  The link to Attaturk's post is here. 

This is an answer to my post on 5/9/05 about Where's the rage? In this case the journalist's reaction is not so much rage, I think, than a deep sorrow for the state of journalism, and a call to the conscience of editors and writers everywhere.

Lessons Learned about Iraq war reporting by Molly Bingham, correspondent for the Courier Journal in Louisville, Kentucky:

"Lesson One: Many journalists in Iraq could not, or would not, check their nationality or their own perspective at the door."

"Lesson Two: Our behavior as journalists has taught us very little. Just as in the lead up to the war in Iraq, questioning our government's decisions and claims and what it seeks to achieve is criticized as unpatriotic."

"Lesson Three: To seek to understand and represent to an American audience the reasons behind the Iraqi opposition is practically treasonous."

"Lesson Four: The gatekeepers -- by which I mean the editors, publishers and business sides of the media -- don't want their paper or their outlet to reveal that compelling narrative of why anyone would oppose the presence of American troops on their soil."

"Lesson Five: What it's like to be afraid of your own country."

I give you the full quote from Lesson Five:

Once the story was finished and set to come out on the street, I was rushing back to the States -- mostly because we could no longer work once the story was published -- and I found I was scared returning to my own country. And that was an amazingly strange and awful feeling to have. Again, you could call me paranoid, but the questions about what might happen to me once in America -- where at least I would have more rights -- kept racing through my brain. I'm still here, so you could say that my frantic mental gymnastics about what could happen to me in my own country were paranoid anxieties.

But then Bingham goes on to ask the important question:  If a reporters with less job security felt that writing a particular story would bring retribution via having their houses searched, being questioned by authorities, would that affect their ability to write the story.  Self-monitoring can turn into self-censoring and the loss of our rights as Americans through the passive response to the need to inform the public.

Bingham says that journalists have to return to asking hard questions of themselves, of government.  That is the way to turn things around and bring our country back to its finest ideals.

Finally, Bingham says:  "It's time we looked in the mirror and began to take responsibility for what our country looks like, what our country is and how it behaves, rather than acting like victims before we actually are.

"Or do I need to start facing the reality that all I love and believe in is simply self-delusion?"