great piece about "the media only reporting the bad news in iraq"

[Gato Moteado]

a friend of mine wrote this piece in response to the latest spin by the administration that the war is going great but only the bad news gets reported. he sent this out to friends of his but as soon as i saw it i knew it needed to get posted here for everyone. copy it and send it to all the repubs you know:

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In order to try to win more support for the Iraq War, Cheney defended some of his statements made earlier on Meet the Press this week end. Here’s a report on that:

“Mr. Cheney was challenged on "Face the Nation" about his statement three years ago that "we will be greeted as liberators" and his assertion 10 months ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes."

He insisted that in both cases his facts were right, but that the news media had created a different perception with vivid imagery of killing.

"I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad," he said.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/politics/20war.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1142830800&en=f3c0c5b8c7ee2700&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin’

Several conservative pundits pushed the idea that reporters only report the bad news in Iraq and that actually things are going quite well there. Unfortunately, none of these reporters had actually been to Iraq. So, I thought maybe we should try to find a reporters who had actually been there to see if we could talk them into telling the good news rather than report only the isolated incidents where things are going badly.

Bob Woodruff can’t give the report yet because he is still recovering from serious injuries sustained when the tank he was riding in hit an IED.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Woodruff

Jawad Khathem, couldn’t do it either because he was paralyzed from the waist down after a kidnap attempt in Iraq. Another reporter who was with him and two cameramen died in the attempt.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/23/journalists.killed/

David L. Roustrum, University of Buffalo Reporter, not available to provide good news from Iraq because a rocket propelled grenade hit his Humvee and killed him in December 2004.

http://www.buffalo.edu/reporter/vol36/vol36n13/articles/StudentSoldier.html

French Reporter Frederic Nerac, not available, he was killed by US fire.

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051020-081946-6040r

Arab Reporter, Mazen al-Tumeizi, also, unavailable for comment. He was killed when US helicopter killed him and 11 civilians as they were standing near a humvee that had been hit by insurgents.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/13/1094927505748.html?onfiltered=true

Terry Loyd also is unavailable for comment. He died when hit with friendly fire.

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1093.shtml

Jill Carroll is unavailable because she is currently being held hostage.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010902078.html

Steven Vincent also can’t help. He was taken hostage and killed in Iraq.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0804/p01s03-woiq.html

Rory Carroll (no relation to Jill) really didn’t feel like talking about how good things were after he was kidnapped and released.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4366406.stm

Daniel Pearl also couldn’t comment; he also was kidnapped. Instead of being released, he was beheaded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pearl

Is Michael Kelly available? No, this reporter died in a humvee in Iraq.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/030414/14kelly.htm

We tried to see if some these reporters were available, but unfortunately, they all died in military action in Iraq also: Tareq Ayyub, Joe Causo, Kaveh Golestan, Christian Liebig, Paul Moran, Kamaran Muhamed, Elizabeth Neuffer, Julio Parrado, and Taras Protsyuk.

http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/3/iraq-obits.asp

After being there six months, perhaps Dennis O’Brien could enlighten us. But, no, his experience there was so horrible that he killed himself upon his return.

http://www.duckdaotsu.org/dennis_Obrien.html

Judy Woodruff (no relation to Bob) saved me the trouble of finding the names of each, “unavailable” reporter, when, about a year ago, she related that 78 reporters have died in Iraq.

http://www.newseum.org/newseum/aboutthenewseum/memorialrededication.htm

More have died since then. This morning on Good Morning America, it was reported that 86 reporters have died in Iraq.

I GOT AN IDEA! Let’s send Limbaugh, Coulter, O’Reilly, and Hannity into the Sunni Triangle so they can report first hand how much Iraq has improved since we have liberated them. Surely they would jump at the chance to show up those liberal liars who didn’t have the bad luck of dying there.