A whole lot of back and forth has gone on in the realm of media bias critiques, punditry and the like claiming that FOX News is too conservative and the NY Times too liberal, etc. In particular, analysts have wondered whether media bias has filtered out good news from Iraq or if, like Vietnam-era journalism, war is simply an ugly story to cover. Of course, it is.
Mistake or not, Iraq is supposed to be an emergent democracy now and all of this bias bickering – which is truly nothing new in America – obscures Iraqi journalism and the development of a free press. Of course, how could those childish and crazy Iraqis possibly have any clue how to write anything objective?
Maybe, just maybe… the Iraqi weekly Al Zawra answers the question “Who Kills Hostages in Iraq?” as well as providing “An Inventory of Iraqi Resistance Groups,” translated for American consumption here through the Project on Government Secrecy site. While pundits bicker, most resistance stories in the American press focus on beheadings and terror masterminds, searching for Al Qaeda links. Al Zawra gives us the lowdown on the growing organization and scope of the actual resistance movements, where they come from, and how they’re structured.
Sorry, it’s “grave.” Just grave, nothing more.
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