The war that few people are talking about

Brian Stelter at the New York Times reports on a recent poll that finds only 4 percent of national news coverage in 2010 was devoted to the war in Afghanistan, despite the escalation in troops and troop deaths. This is down from 5 percent in 2009.

Dexter Filkins, NYT war correspondent, moving to New Yorker

The Observer reports that Dexter Filkins, author of the "The Forever War," a gripping account of combat in Iraq, and one of the New York Times's top correspondents in Afghanistan/Pakistan, will leave the paper to work for the New Yorker. He won't be covering the war for the magazine.

Canadian journalist killed in Afghanistan

Canadian journalist Michelle Lang, a 34-year-old reporter at the Calgary Herald, was killed Wednesday along with four soldiers when a roadside bomb hit the armored vehicle they were traveling in:

She is the first Canadian journalist to die in the Afghan war since Canada joined the international mission in 2002, and is believed to be the first Herald reporter ever killed on the job in the paper’s 126-year history.

She was on a six-week assignment in Afghanistan.

It's hip to quit

First, California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom dropped out. Then Afghan presidential contender Abdullah Abdullah made it known he wasn't going to run in a runoff. Now, with fewer than three days to go before Election Day, Republican congressional candidate Dede Scozzafava has quit her campaign for office.

Four in the evening

1. The Washington Post reaffirms its allegiance to impartial journalism with a new social media policy. WaPo

2. Tehran Bureau has teamed up with Frontline to expand coverage of Iran. NYT

3. Read a banned book, it'll be good for your soul. Scott Martelle

4. Given the challenges we face in Afghanistan, it's time to take a closer look at Yemen. Time

Picture of war (update)

In response to the debate over the publication of an Associated Press photograph of a mortally wounded Marine in Afghanistan, Tim McGuire at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism argues that news outlets have a responsibility to show the grim truth of war and shouldn't let government appeals or family feelings sway the decision.

McGuire writes:

My former ethics students have been particularly engaged by the controversy over the Associated Press transmission of the photo of the soldier who died in Afghanistan. One student wrote: “I thought of you as I was reading about the controversial photo of the Marine that AP posted, even after they were repeatedly asked not to by family and others. I was wondering what you thought about this picture and whether you would have posted it.”

If you are like me, the phrase that defines my student’s note and screams out is, “even after they were repeatedly asked not to by family and others.” For so many people following this controversy, including Robert Gates, that family request should have stopped publication. Gates was quoted as writing to AP, “Why your organization would purposely defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple newspapers is appalling.”

This case is great evidence why journalistic publications in pursuit of news and bent on showing truth are never going to be friends with government, and even some of the public. It’s why business model discussions which might sacrifice real independence scare the heck out of me. I know there are people who feel the anger of this Associated Content commentator, but the contention that AP transmitted this photo in the pursuit of money displays such an incredible lack of understanding of how news works, it is staggering. ...

Read his entire essay here.

(via Romenesko)

Role of the fixer

The death of Sultan Munadi has drawn attention to the important role local "fixers" play in helping foreign journalists cover foreign wars.

Munadi, who worked with the New York Times in Afghanistan, was killed in a gun battle on Wednesday as British commandos attempted to rescue him and New York Times correspondent Stephen Farrell from their Taliban captors. Farrell survived.

New Yorker writer George Packer, who reported extensively on the Iraq war, shines some light on the work fixers do and how foreign bureaus rely upon their cultural, historical and linguistic knowledge.

The relationship between fixers and foreign correspondents can be very close. Shared dangers and successes will do that, especially when the work done together, the tie between you, is what puts you at risk. In Iraq and Afghanistan and a growing number of other places, the foreign correspondent would be a target with or without the fixer, but the fixer is a target because he or she is with the foreign correspondent. Both are considered spies, but one is only an infidel, while the other is something worse—an apostate, a traitor. In my experience, this mutually voluntary risk is rarely a source of resentment on the part of fixers. They are generally young, cosmopolitan, quick-witted, stoical, tinged with idealism, implacable foes of their countries’ extremists; and, after all, they understand better than anyone what they have signed up for. For the most part, the risk strengthens the bond. It becomes a cause of tension only when it’s borne by just one side.

New York Times reporter David Rohde knew Munadi and wrote a remembrance of him for the paper here. Rohde was also captured by the Taliban and later escaped along with his fixer:

The death of Mr. Munadi illustrated two grim truths of the war in Afghanistan: vastly more Afghans than foreigners have died battling the Taliban, and foreign journalists are only as good as the Afghan reporters who work with them.

Munadi wrote about some of his own experiences at the Times' War blog:

Being a journalist is not enough; it will not solve the problems of Afghanistan. I want to work for the education of the country, because the majority of people are illiterate. That is the main problem facing many Afghans. I am really committed to come back and work for my country.

Commandos free NYT journalist

Military commandos freed a New York Times reporter held captive for four days by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Stephen Farrell and his interpreter, Sultan Munadi, were captured on Saturday while reporting on a NATO airstrike near Kunduz that killed upwards of 90 people. Munadi was killed during the rescue.

As happened when reporter David Rohde was captured, the New York Times kept quiet about the journalists; abduction.

From the NYT:

“We feared that media attention would raise the temperature and increase the risk to the captives,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times. “We’re overjoyed that Steve is free, but deeply saddened that his freedom came at such a cost. We are doing all we can to learn the details of what happened. Our hearts go out to Sultan’s family.”

Picture of war

An Associated Press photograph of a mortally wounded Marine in Afghanistan has raised old questions about the appropriateness of publishing photos of American soldiers who are dead or dying.

The picture, taken by AP photographer Julie Jacobson, shows two Marines tending to Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard after he was hit in the legs by a rocket-propelled grenade. Bernard later died during surgery.

Jacobson said this to Editor and Publisher:

To ignore a moment like that simply ... would have been wrong. I was recording his impending death, just as I had recorded his life moments before walking the point in the bazaar ... Death is a part of life and most certainly a part of war. Isn't that why we're here? To document for now and for history the events of this war?

Editor and Publisher did a quick survey of the papers that did, and did not, publish the photo.

InDenver Times, the successor to the Rocky Mountain News, did not run the photo and explains why here.

The New York Times ran the photo on its Lens blog and explains why here.

The photo can be seen here.

The spin cycle*,**

Public relations expert Eric Dezenhall yawns at last week's revelations from Stars and Stripes that the Pentagon used a private PR firm to screen journalists who wanted to embed with military units in Afghanistan. In a post entitled "Pentagon Caught, uh, Promoting Its Interests," Dezenhall tells us:

Profile-gate is emblematic of a pandemic of "news" stories where the publication of internal memos by cultural villains, usually corporations or industry associations, outlining programs that - push back from your computer screens because what you are about to read is not for the faint-of-heart -- PROMOTE THEIR INTERESTS!

Clever. But in addition to being a cultural villain to some, the Pentagon is prosecuting a war, and the central question driving the stories was whether the profiles were used to reward positive coverage and punish negative coverage of that war. Maybe Stars and Stripes got a little breathless at times, but answering that question promotes our interests.

Speaking of which, freelance journalist Jason Motlagh, writing at Time.com, says the military denied his request to embed with a special forces unit after the private PR firm gave him a negative review:

I recently applied to embed with U.S. Special Forces to cover a new initiative to raise and train civilian militias in Taliban strongholds. After waiting for more than a month for a response, I was accidentally copied on an e-mail sent by the public-affairs department to the presiding officer who would give or deny approval. A color-coded pie chart showed that 47% of my stories were deemed negative, 47% neutral and 6% positive. In a section titled "Key Takeaway Points," it was mentioned that my stories have been lengthy, with plenty of context and sources. It was added, however, that "most notably, he tends to quote experts" from a British think tank "which has been critical of the coalition mission and the Afghan government." A day after the e-mail — which included the Rendon analysis — was sent to the officer, my application was rejected without explanation.

*Update: Journalist Thomas Ricks also nonplussed by the Stars and Stripes stories.

**Update II: New York Times editorial board applauds the decision to dump the Rendon Group and encourages the Pentagon to focus its energy on conducting the war rather than shaping the story.

Rated and rejected

The U.S. Army now acknowledges that it rejected reporters applying to embed with military units based in part on the ratings developed by the Rendon Group.

From Star and Stripes:

“If a reporter has been focused on nothing but negative topics, you’re not going to send him into a unit that’s not your best,” Maj. Patrick Seiber, spokesman for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, told Stars and Stripes. “There’s no win-win there for us. We’re not trying to control what they report, but we are trying to put our best foot forward.” ...

In at least two instances, Seiber said, he rejected embed requests based partly on what he read in the profiles — once because a reporter had allegedly done "poor reporting" and once because a journalist reportedly had violated embed rules by releasing classified information. The latter allegation, if true, would have been grounds for automatic denial of an embed request even in the absence of the profile.

Casting ballots in Afghanistan

Jonathan Landay of McClatchy Newspapers leads off the discussion on today's "To The Point" about the Afghan elections. He's joined by Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress, who's in Kabul to monitor the election; Nathaniel Fick, head of the Center for a New American Security, and Nicholas Schmidle, journalist and a fellow at the New America Foundation.

No violence (reported)

To make sure reports of violence don't deter people from going to the polls on Thursday, the Afghan government has barred news outlets from reporting on any violence on Thursday.

From the New York Times:

...the Afghan Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement asking all domestic and international news agencies to refrain from reporting any violent attacks between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on election day.

The National Security Council ad made the decision “in view of the need to ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people in upcoming presidential and provincial council elections, and prevent any election-related terrorist violence,” the statement said.

Two AP journalists wounded in Afghanistan

An Associated Press photographer and videographer were hit by a roadside bomb while traveling with a U.S. military unit. AP

Shifting priorities, shifting beats

As the U.S. military shifts its emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, the New York Times and other papers are moving reporters from Baghdad to Kabul.

Alissa Rubin will be leaving her post as Baghdad bureau chief for the Times to cover the fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Stephen Lee Meyers will take Rubin's place in Baghdad.

From the New York Observer:

Back in April, foreign editor Susan Chira told us the Times would be bulking up its Pakistan coverage.

“This is obviously the war that the president is focusing on,” said Ms. Chira then. “And troops are being shifted to there so we intend to gear up ... But we won’t leave Baghdad."

She also told us that many veterans of The Times’ Iraq coverage, including CJ Chivers, Sabrina Tavernise, Richard Oppel and Dexter Filkins, would be turning their attention to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well.

Reporters escape Taliban kidnappers

David Rohde, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, and local reporter Tahir Ludin escaped their Taliban kidnappers Friday after seven months in captivity in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The New York Times and other media outlets had kept the story of the kidnappings under wraps "out of concern for the men's safety."

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Rohde, 41, had traveled to Afghanistan in early November to work on a book about the history of American involvement there when he was invited to interview a Taliban commander in Logar Province outside Kabul. Mr. Rohde, who years before had been taken prisoner while reporting in Bosnia, had instructed The Times’s bureau in Kabul about whom to notify if he did not return. He also indicated that he believed that the interview was important and that he would be all right.

His father, Harvey Rohde, said that while he regretted that his son had made the trip, he understood his motivation, “to get both sides of the story, to have his book honestly portray not just the one side but the other side as well.”

In 1996, while working for the Christian Science Monitor, Rohde was imprisoned and interrogated by Bosnian Serbs after he snuck into Serb territory to find evidence of mass graves in the Bosnian conflict.

Iraq, uncovered

The Project for Excellence in Journalism did a study back in May that found coverage of the Iraq war accounted for only three percent of what American newspapers and broadcasters produced in the first months of 2008.

Now the New York Times reports that the major networks have "quietly" decided to stop sending full-time reporters to Iraq. From the story:

In Baghdad, ABC, CBS and NBC still maintain skeleton bureaus in heavily fortified compounds. Correspondents rotate in and out when stories warrant, and with producers and Iraqi employees remaining in Baghdad, the networks can still react to breaking news. But employees who are familiar with the staffing pressures of the networks say the bureaus are a shadow of what they used to be. Some of the offices have only one Western staff member.

The staff cuts appear to be the latest evidence of budget pressures at the networks. And those pressures are not unique to television: many newspapers and magazines have also curtailed their presence in Baghdad. As a consequence, the war is gradually fading from television screens, newspapers and, some worry, the consciousness of the American public.

As network and cable news outlets cut back in one war zone, there has been no corresponding increase in coverage of our other war zone - the one that's supposed to be the real frontline in the war on terror. Until CNN recently sent a full-time reporter to Afghanistan, no major television or cable news outlet had a full-time bureau there.

(via Romensko)