Serendipity
CNN has a report today from the U.N. about the amazing recovery of the Iraqi Marshlands. I found the end of the article somewhat amusing:
[The U.N. Agency] said that four years ago, it "alerted the world" to the marshland crisis. "Totaling almost 9,000 square kilometers of permanent wetlands, the Iraqi marshlands dwindled to just 760 square kilometers in 2002...a Human Rights Watch briefing paper published in January 2003 said the Marsh Arabs, had numbered around 250,000 people "as recently as 1991" but were "believed to number fewer than 40,000 in their ancestral homeland." It read: "Starting shortly after the end of the Gulf war in 1991, Marsh Arabs have been singled out for even more direct assault: mass arrests, enforced 'disappearances,' torture, and execution of political opponents have been accompanied by ecologically catastrophic drainage of the marshlands and the large-scale and systematic forcible transfer of part of the local population."
Alerts are always good, I guess, but the article makes no mention of the event that made this turn-around possible.
posted by Presley Bennett @ 8/28/2005
4 comments
4 Comments:
Oh, so they decline to report any good news (successes) because it is "obvious", but insist upon magnifying and endlessly repeating every sliver of bad news (failures) because it is not "obvious"?
How do they make the determination between the obvious and the unobvious? Well, I think that the answer is obvious.
Please understand that there was a day, not too long ago, when there simply was no alternative to the likes of ABC,NBC,ABC and then CNN. All of these news groups skewed the news in any fashion they pleased and they shared the same bias. Yes, today there are alternatives but this is a pretty recent development.
I certainly expect everyone to have innate biases, that is part of human nature. To leave those biases at home when you are doing a job such as jouralism should be part of professional nature. I don't think that professionalism is too much to ask from overpaid, overcoiffed TV newsreaders.
As for the story in question, a basic tenet of journalism is "who, what, when, where, and why" and the "why" should have been stated, whether the writer felt it to be obvious or not. The writer is either a shoddy journalist or a partisan hack.
There is commentary and punditry and then there is reporting and there should be a clear line of demarcation between the two. It's the difference between information and propaganda.
I don't mean to make a big deal out of this, or to be overly confrontational. I simply think that this sort of thing has gone on for far too long.
It's obvious? You mean Santa Claus is real??
I think Crys is right from the standpoint that it IS obvious that nothing would have happened with the Marshlands but for our invasion of Iraq. But just because it's obvious doesn't mean that it shouldn't be noted. No Iraq War, no marshlands recovery. Cause and effect...obvious, yes but still worth noting. If nothing else, to inform all those people living in caves for the last two years who might not know about the Iraq war.
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