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Embedding the Spin

Via War Room:
In an interview with Foreign Policy, Rod Nordland, the magazine's chief foreign correspondent and former Baghdad bureau chief, says that conditions in Iraq are 'much worse' than they're described in the U.S. press.

The reason? The Bush administration does a 'great job of managing the news,' and the military has begun to crack down on embedded reporters who might otherwise offer a clear assessment of facts on the ground. 'Before a journalist is allowed to go on an embed now, [the military] check[s] the work you have done previously,' Nordland says. 'They want to know your slant on a story -- they use the word 'slant' -- what you intend to write, and what you have written from embed trips before. If they don't like what you have done before, they refuse to take you. There are cases where individual reporters have been blacklisted because the military wasn't happy with the work they had done on embed.'

I guess the Bushies have taken that old "nothing nice, say nothing" adage to heart. Though in this case it's "if you can't report the war the way we want, you won't report on it at all."

Hate to say it, but that's such a non-surprise it hardly bears mentioning. Though I suppose that the as a lead in to some in-depth reporting about the real situation on the ground, it would be worth considering.

Usually turn myself to the foreign sources for a perspective on how things are actually going, though usually they have just as much trouble getting the real info out.

You are right, this really comes as no surprise from this administration. I think the surprising thing is that they weren't doing this from the get go. Then again they didn't have to worry too much about how the media would portray the war, since it always had a 'slant' toward the administration's version.

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