No news is bad news II
: Peter Johnson in USA Today continues his theme on the quality of reporting in Iraq. Today, he talks to former Pentagon spokescivilian Torrie Clarke, who says the military is trying to get more reporters back to Iraq to report on more stories.
There’s a link between fewer reporters and the barrage of bad news, says Torie Clarke, the former Pentagon spokeswoman and architect of the embedding program.
”It’s a problem,” says Clarke, 44, who has joined CNN as a public policy analyst for Paula Zahn Now. ”We went from hundreds of journalists all over Iraq covering every aspect of the war. I don’t know what the number is now, but it’s a fraction of that now, and I think that is too bad. There are some really important things going on in that country. Many are good, some are bad, but if there was more coverage and more comprehensive coverage, people would get a clearer picture.”
The Pentagon is ”encouraging news organizations to send journalists” back to Iraq, she says.
Bombing network news operations won’t help. But, of course, that’s just the point.
