Landscape After Battle [Editorial re: Responsibility of the Media -- GOOD]

[Tesibria]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000720461

Landscape After Battle
by Greg Mitchell
How the press pictures the aftermath of the Battle of Fallujah may set the stage for assaults on other angry Iraqi cities. Did we really have to destroy much of the city to save it? "Even the dogs have started to die," one reporter observes.

How the press portrays the aftermath of the Battle of Fallujah may determine what happens next in Iraq. In the days ahead, therefore, the media must look carefully at both the strategic benefits and the human toll of the offensive.

While the issues are endlessly complex, they boil down to the simple age-old question: Does the end justify the means? It will be fascinating, though possibly quite sad, to see how this plays out in the press in the coming days.

A glorious victory to some may look like Bush's Guernica to others.

With the fight easing -- though by no means finished -- the assessment process has just begun, with embedded reporters seeing more of (what's left of) the city and independent journalists now braving the scattered gunfire. What they learn, the pictures they take and the lessons they draw, will help shape public opinion as the administration ponders "Fallujah-type solutions" for routing insurgents from Ramadi, Samarra, Mosul, and other inflamed cities.

So there are a lot of lives, Iraqi and American, riding at least in part on press reports and visuals.

Read the entire article here