The mid-term elections have come and gone. Personally, I am exhausted from the news coverage of the election; in fact, I was tired of the news coverage last month. Not only has the election dominated the news, but the mainstream media have framed most of the other news stories — sex scandals, immigration and Iraq — largely in terms of the election.
I stopped getting my daily news fix from CNN, Fox and MSNBC. Instead, I recently have been turning to other sources of news such as the Associated Press and BBC to get a different view of the world. Looking around on the Internet, I also have started exploring other types of websites for news about Iraq. As a crusty old war vet (as I have been accused by some of the younger undergrads), I have been unsatisfied with the coverage of Iraq since returning from my trip to the desert. The daily news stories by traditional news sources revolve around strategic issues such as the trial of Saddam Hussein, military operations, and the daily Iraqi and American body counts. These stories are impersonal and often written with the bias of the media outlet for which the reporter is working. The reporting of Iraq and Afghanistan by mainstream media seems to be fixated only on death and too often forgets to show daily life there.
Living in Iraq and Afghanistan is dangerous for coalition forces and the civilians who live with violence as a part of their daily lives. Life there is not the rosy picnic or the mass pandemonium that most of the mainstream media attempt to show, depending on the news channel. As a result, I have left the realm of the major cable networks and decided to get much of my news about the wars from the blogosphere.
Life for Iraqis, Afghanis and those who are trying to provide stability for them is not simple or orderly. Instead it is complicated, charged with emotion and often difficult to understand. Reading military blogs (or "milblogs") provides a vastly different picture of life in the Middle East and Central Asia. Daily life in Iraq or Afghanistan does not center on death or trials. Not every building in Kirkuk is in ruins, and not every deployed soldier has been hit by an IED this week.
The first-hand accounts in milblogs show an Iraq and an Afghanistan that is not what is shown in Fox News or CNN. When I showed a friend of mine a military video from YouTube (an outlet for deployed soldiers' video clips), he was shocked at the beauty of some of the architecture in Baghdad. I had to remind him, "Not every building has been blown up in Baghdad, you know." Reading through some of the blogs brings back my own memories of Mosul and life in Iraq: The monotony of daily life sprinkled with unpredictable spikes of adrenaline, the kindness of most of the Iraqi people on the street, the camaraderie of my unit and the difficulty of working in a culture that is so different from my own.
For major news outlets, it is difficult to report on these wars, especially in 30 seconds. It is even more challenging considering the security situation in these two countries, especially for journalists. To compound matters, according to Editor and Publisher, there are only seven journalists currently embedded with American forces in Iraq, as compared to 770 at the height of the conflict. The media, however, have made life in these countries a sound bite and have not presented a real view of the situation on the ground. The media have portrayed pictures of both Iraq and Afghanistan that are too simple, too orderly — too prepackaged for the public (especially potential voters) to grasp the reality.
On Veterans Day this Saturday, I suggest sitting down with a late-morning coffee and reading a few military blogs or watching a few video clips that soldiers wrote and shot in Iraq and Afghanistan. They provide a much more tangible view of Iraq and Afghanistan, a view of life there by men and women on the ground who interact with the local people. These powerful firsthand accounts are written by our peers and show an Iraq and Afghanistan that is alive, not just a regurgitation of a body count.
Liz O'Herrin's journal, published every week by The Badger Herald, has shown an Iraq that is not the Iraq we see on the morning cable news. There are a dozen more accounts like Ms. O'Herrin's in the blogosphere, and this Saturday, take a second to explore Iraq and Afghanistan in ways that the mainstream media have left largely as uncharted territory.
Jeff Carnes ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in linguistics.
