Dante Chinni, a senior associate at the Project for Excellence in Journalism, writes in the Christian Science Monitor that Bill Roggio’s blogging—including his current embed in Iraq—has value, BUT:
His bias can be overwhelming at times – his posts can sound a lot like government talking points filtered through war stories. When he’s not filing stories from a war zone, he likes to take issue with the mainstream media’s reporting of events, such as The Washington Post’s recent report on the dangers of Anbar Province. He often sees Al Qaeda as the hand behind most of what’s going on in Iraq, such as the Thanksgiving bombings that killed more than 200.
I fail to see how saying we lost western Pakistan to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and Somalia to the Islamic Courts, and failed to subdue al-Qaeda in Ramadi and Muqtada al-Sadr, are government talking points. In fact, I’ve made some people in the government very uncomfortable.
Roggio is still busy in Iraq, so this Fourth Rail reader would like to point out how polite that response is.
Roggio “likes to take issue with the mainstream media’s reporting of events, such as The Washington Post’s recent report on the dangers of Anbar Province?” Yes, he does, based on what he was told by several sources in the military and intelligence who have actually seen the entire report that was the basis of the WaPo story—which itself was based on paraphrasing and excerpts. Roggio also wrote:
The Washington Post report on Anbar certainly contains plenty of truth, which makes the argument effective. But the statements are excepted (and cleverly at that, note the breaks in the quotations) and the context is poor. Several examples… (emphasis added).
It is not as though Roggio is entirely dismissed the story or failed to explain what he saw as the lack of context in the examples. The last part would be a good lesson for Mr. Chinni to learn, as his piece on Roggio is—aside from this point about the WaPo story—devoid of any concrete examples of Roggio’s “overwhelming” bias.
Roggio “often sees Al Qaeda as the hand behind most of what’s going on in Iraq, such as the Thanksgiving bombings that killed more than 200?” He did see al-Qaeda in Iraq as behind the Thanksgiving Day attack in Sadr City. Of course the Times of London and even Moqtada al-Sadr thought so, too—probably for the reason that it was a well-coordinated multi-bomb attack that is an AQ trademark.
As for Roggio thinking that AQ is “the hand behind most of what’s going on in Iraq,” a review of his recent posts on Iraq includes pieces on Al Qaeda, but also raids against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City (more than once, actually), fighting Sunni insurgents in Kirkuk, Baquba, Yusifiyah and Ramadi, and fighting the Mahdi Army in Baquba.
A lighter moment is when Chinni, having propped up his strawblogger, knocks it down thusly:
Those views are not in the mainstream and many people, including Iraq Study Group cochairmen James Baker and Lee Hamilton, do not subscribe to them.
No, Baker and Hamilton subscribe to the idea that we should be engaging Iraq and Syria. Military experts and historians disagree with that idea. Indeed, not even the ISG seriously thinks engagement with Iran will work. For that matter, at one time, it was the mainstream view that the Sun revolves around the Earth, but that didn’t make it correct, either.
Chinni continues, ostensibly praising Roggio’s reporting on the views of soldiers in Iraq, including their “real and growing dislike for the press among the soldiers who, he says, feel the media have ‘abandoned’ them,” but seems compelled to note that “these are only a few voices and anecdotes.” Here’s a hint for Mr. Chinni—if you write a column for the CSM, you might try reading it. Start with this CSM piece reporting that many of our troops are upset with the disproportionately negative coverage of their efforts.
Chinni also worries that Roggio’s readers will have a skewed view of conditions in Iraq if they don’t also read the MSM accounts. Apparently he missed Roggio’s sidebar, which links to MSM stories, including (as of today):
For Iraq’s Sunnis, Conflict Closes In
2 car bombs kill 11 in Iraq
Uneasy Havens Await Those Who Flee Iraq
Former head of British army says there is a resource shortfall in Iraq and Afghanistan
Saudis and Iran prepare to do battle over corpse of Iraq
Iraq: Pilot of crashed F-16 listed as killed in action
Iraqi Army falters in Baghdad mission
Also in the sidebar are handpicked “Today In..” blocks for regions of interest to Roggio. Today, the lead item for Iraq was “Sectarian violence rages on.”
I will say this for Chinni’s column: it was not as riddled with basic factual errors as the WaPo story that mentioned Roggio last year. So Chinni’s piece might be best described as “naturally one-sided, but it is engaging.”
“Chinni also worries that Roggio’s readers will have a skewed view of conditions in Iraq if they don’t also read the MSM accounts. “
Did Mr. Chinni also worry that consumers were getting a skewed view if they only read MSM accounts? Did he really think that the MSM was unbiased?
Increasingly, the MSM is getting more frightened by the Internets.
To be fair to Chinni, he writes of Roggio:
So it’s possible that he would not favor a total reliance on the MSM, though he (for whatever reason) does not explicitly say so.
well, and Roggio does his damndest to keep politics out of his posts and comments. I was telling RTO about how he very strictly policed the comments until recently, but i’m afraid he may have to again since he’s getting more attention.
It’s only fair to be fair to Chinni Karl, but what a convoluted few paragraphs he wrote.
Of note is:
Well, duh!; to read only one source has been stupid ever since Ernie Pyle died.
Why hasn’t Chinni been decrying the reading of only the MSM (and without options) from the period between Pyle and before the “Roggios” were forced to take, and relate, reality into their own hands?
Maggie’s comment reminded me to note this comment at the Fourth Rail:
The reson this comment leapt out at me was that it is not too different from that of the WaPo’s Tom Ricks:
No bias from the author of Fiasco in that bit about a war launched on false premises, of course.
But both comments go to the point that what Chinni is calling “overwhelming” bias is in fact his own inability to recognize that Roggio is covering the military aspects of the war, not the political aspects of the war.
Moreover, re-reading Chinni’s piece, I am struck by the degree to which someone opining on excellence in journalism, Chinni is remarkably vague as to what Roggio’s bias is, other than that “his posts can sound a lot like government talking points filtered through war stories.” Again, Chinni provides no examples of this, and based on the one or two examples discussed in my main entry, it’s easy to see why.
Another point that leapt out during the re-read was Chinni’s suggestion that Roggio’s blog reflects a pro-war segment of the blogosphere detached from the reality of conditions in Iraq:
Chinni’s quotes come from Roggio’s Dec 3 post, titled “The Military and The Media:”
So the unrealistic view of conditions in Iraq Chinni chides was not Roggio’s, but the view expressed by our troops in Iraq, though Chinni managed to leave out the part about admitting obstacles. As the troops are more likely to know what the conditions in Iraq are than Chinni, their views can only be characterized as unrealistic by viewing the conflict through the political lens.
Again, to be fair to Chinni there is something to be said for viewing the conflict through the political lens. Indeed, the US military understood that the decisive point in the counter-insurgency was political, not military, long before the MSM caught on.
However, the US military also knows that wars of counter-insurgency, whether it’s Malaysia or Vietnam, the Philippines or Algeria, tend to be long and messy, regardless of outcome. In contrast, I suspect that most people working for the MSM have little more than a cursory knowledge of Vietnam (quagmire!), let alone these other conflicts. Thus, they end up looking only through the political lens without any context for evaluating what they are seeing.
Excellent stuff, Karl. I think your comment may actually be better than the post.
Karl, another excellent post. I have to run so I’ve only been able to skim but, as usual, you have covered the topic.
BTW: I’m curious. You are the champion of the mutiple link/source. Is there a condition, like snow blindness, when you arrange all of these links? Sort of like “links blindness” or something?
Just askin’. I seek to protect all of our posters from the dangers of blogging. Except for Dan, he’s too far gone…
Thanks, Dan & BJ.
Dan, I may return to some of the points raised in my comment in a separate post, albeit from a different angle (though I’m hoping Jeff returns and kicks us out before then).
BJ, I am a fan of the multiple link. For the sake of readability, I try to be careful which text I highlight for the links, especially where, as here, the orange color is high-contrast to the regular text (note I didn’t link to all of the MSM stories Roggio carries). But the reason I’m big on links is that I think that they are the essence of what the web (at least the pre-broadband web) has to offer. Readers –especially those that are unfamiliar with me or my writing—can evaluate what I write by checking the link. Had Chinni been required to include links for the online version of his column—aside from the one to Roggio’s home page—any skeptical reader could have quickly deduced what I already knew from reading Roggio’s blog, i.e., that Chinni was unfairly characterizing its content.
Karl: I like the multiple link (especially since I upgraded to the new Explorer and can now open tabs) (I know, I know, my son is on my butt to get Firefox, but I’m lazy.) No criticism was expressed. To the contrary, I appreciate being able to examine the source material and draw my own conclusions.
As far as Chinni goes; I get the impression from him that there is a “proper” way to report Iraq war news that doesn’t include much of any positives (unless it’s a major operation like Fallujah.) That, more than anything else, is an indicator of the quality of reporting out of Iraq. No war could possibly be going as completely bad as we are led to believe.
Uh, oh! No doubt Neo-stink is going to try and drop a commentary MOAB on my head for the above…