Reporting Iraq
- 24 May 07, 08:39 PM
In Iraq on Thursday, there was of a funeral in Falluja killing at least 25 people, several attacks around Baghdad killing at least 15 people; the body of one of the American soldiers captured last week by insurgents ; and there were several attacks in the north and west of the country that killed civilians as well as American and Iraqi troops. Only the attack on the funeral and the identification of the captured American were reported in news bulletins and none of the news programmes decided to cover any of these events in depth.
Why? Have journalists become so inured to the violence in Iraq that it is no longer considered news worthy?
Although there is a stereotype of callous hacks I don't think this is the explanation.
Part of the answer is that there were two other big stories in the Middle East - the escalation in the conflict between the Israelis and Hamas, and the UN report that Iran could be three years away from being able to make a nuclear weapon - which editors judged were more significant on the day than the continuation of violence in Iraq along familiar lines.
The second part of the answer is that editors are aware that we need to find new angles and new ways to tell the Iraq story, otherwise the audience can get to the stage where they mentally switch off if everyday there is a list of incidents of death and destruction. One example this week was when our Baghdad correspondent, Andrew North, went to the campus of one the main universities in the city to talk to students about how they continue to study and live their lives in the midst of the conflict - his report was broadcast on Today (listen here) and the World Service on Monday.
The following day there were attacks on two campuses which killed a number of students, so we on The World Tonight (listen here) interviewed a student who we have spoken to before about her reaction to these attacks, and her hopes and fears for her and her country's future. We hope that by talking to ordinary Iraqis we can help interest audiences in the stories though hearing how people like them live.
In addition to this, when we decide to cover Iraq we try to choose developments that are indicative of trends which can help us make sense of what is happening and why, and how things are likely to develop. So in recent weeks, we have looked at the row over the building of a wall around a Sunni area of Baghdad to try to reduce sectarian violence, which allowed us to look at whether the 'surge' in US troop numbers in the city has had any effect.
We also report the deaths of British soldiers, although as the deaths have become more frequent in the past few months, we have done less analysis of why they are getting killed and whether policy will change, and simply reported the deaths in our news bulletins. I was talking to a military press officer recently who said that sometimes soldiers and their families resent the fact that deaths of British servicemen and women seem to be given less emphasis than in the earlier part of the conflict, but on the other hand he said he understood that the more frequently an event - even the deaths of soldiers and civilians - occurs, the less emphasis it will receive.
It would be interesting to know if you think our approach is the right one.
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
