AP agrees: war not over

Via Jari Lindholm (whose blog seems to have been taken down, unfortunately) on Twitter, I came across this directive from the AP's Standards Center. It states, among other things, that

combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials. The situation on the ground in Iraq is no different today than it has been for some months. Iraqi security forces are still fighting Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents. Many Iraqis remain very concerned for their country's future despite a dramatic improvement in security, the economy and living conditions in many areas.

As for U.S. involvement, it also goes too far to say that the U.S. part in the conflict in Iraq is over.

It's worth reading the whole thing, both as a reminder of the continued violence in Iraq and as a way to help you understand the media's thinking in coverage of that ongoing violence.

"What's hard to look at"

This week's issue of TIME features a heart-wrenching photograph of an 18-year old Afghan woman who had her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban as punishment for running away from her abusive in-laws. It's a disturbing look at the awful things that people do to one another, a tangible, visible reminder of the brutality that ideologues visit on those they seek to rule.

But is it right?

TIME's managing editor, Richard Stengel, explained his decision to feature the photograph on the magazine's cover. (Fair warning: the link above takes you to his editor's note and a small version of the image, so if you're easily shaken and you'd rather avoid it, don't click. Here's the cover story, and here's a link to a full-size pdf of the image.)

The much publicized release of classified documents by WikiLeaks has already ratcheted up the debate about the war. Our story and the haunting cover image by the distinguished South African photographer Jodi Bieber are meant to contribute to that debate. We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it. We do it to illuminate what is actually happening on the ground. As lawmakers and citizens begin to sort through the information about the war and make up their minds, our job is to provide context and perspective on one of the most difficult foreign policy issues of our time. What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents: a combination of emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land and the consequences of the important decisions that lie ahead.

So: does this constitute advocacy? (Before you answer, consider the fact that the woman's picture is accompanied by the headline, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.") Stengel's assertion that the decision to run the image was judgment-neutral strains credulity; will anyone view that photo and say "this helps confirm my view that we must withdraw?"

I don't have a problem with advocacy one way or the other, even by media organizations. Publications are within their rights to have an editorial line, and if TIME's is that we ought to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely in order to protect the human rights of Afghans, then that's fine. But let's not fool ourselves that this is merely "provid[ing] context and perspective on one of the most difficult foreign policy issues of our time," unless that context and perspective amounts to "there are no good options here."

And again, didn't we already know that?

I don't want to reduce this whole thing to a complaint about the media and the circulation motive, the ethics of making editorial decisions and headline choices out of a drive to sell papers, etc etc, because I don't find that to be a particularly interesting subject. Will more people pick up this issue because of the disturbing cover image? Probably. Will some people avoid it for the same reason? Probably. Will more people be talking about TIME because of this provocative editorial decision? Certainly, and it strikes me that that's probably the point.

So I guess if we're trying to come around to something bigger than a discussion of journalistic ethics, it's this: should the plight of women (or people in general) under hard-line theocratic rule be driving our policy choices?

What about after 1,000 dead Americans?

What about after 10,000 dead Americans?

There's no moral equivocation here. We are the good guys, and there's no two ways about it. I'm not going to sit here and say "well the Taliban might cut people's faces off, but we kill plenty of people with misguided Hellfires and that's just as bad!", because it's not. There's a difference in intent, and that matters.

But where's the line? How many human rights are enough? How much suffering is too much?

So, this: What's the magnitude of human tragedy required to justify a financially and strategically bankrupting enterprise?

Hey Scions of Great American Newspaper Tradition, stop sucking so bad and embarrassing yourselves

Just last week we had James Risen carrying the Defense Department's jock with a silly war-justifying story about Afghan mineral wealth in the NYT. Then today Karen DeYoung drops a thinly-sourced and badly-headlined expose on how "Rolling Stone broke interview ground-rules with McChrystal, military officials say."

Of course, "military officials" will only "say" that anonymously. You know, "on background." To a reporter. Who won't print their names because of, well, you know, "ethics." (And to preserve access. [Speaking of, click that link. Did you know that Politico editors removed a line from an online story published yesterday that suggested Hastings, as a freelancer, might have been willing to print things that a beat reporter would have held back in order to preserve access? The editors say they did it to keep the story "tight and readable."])

"Many of the sessions were off-the-record and intended to give [reporter Michael Hastings] a sense" of how McChrystal's team operated, according to a senior military official. The command's own review of events, the official said, gleaned "no evidence to suggest" that any of the "salacious political quotes" in the article were made during a series of on-the-record and background interviews Hastings conducted with McChrystal and others.

The official, one of many subject to a Pentagon advisory not to discuss the situation without authorization, spoke on condition of anonymity. He said he was motivated by what he described as untrue claims made by Rolling Stone.

Two others with direct knowledge of the command's dealings with Hastings offered similar accounts.

You see, if "military officials" really wanted to denounce this story, they'd issue a press release through official channels. If anyone had really broken any kind of binding rules, you'd be sure the Department would tell everyone about it. But instead, you have the Washington fuckin' Post -- theoretically one of the two media organs best positioned to challenge the government's baseless assertions -- reporting exactly what the Department wants them to.

That makes Old Media 2/2 in the last two weeks.

I'm sure this has nothing to do with the Post feeling burned that someone else is #1 in the media-on-media meta-commentary this week.

Embarrassing.

War via Wikileaks

It's become a cliche to describe the media as an ever-present factor in modern military operations that can confer strategic importance on tactical actions, but Wikileaks is driving the phenomenon to new heights. As both the BBC and the New York Times have reported, the organization has posted video from an incident in 2007 when American Apaches fired on two groups of individuals on a street in Baghdad, killing twelve. The video is from the Apaches themselves, and thus provides more insight into the situation than is typical because it includes the communications between the two helos, and between the Apaches and US troops on the ground. Watch for yourselves, and please note that if I knew the first thing about video editing, I'd get rid of Wikileaks' inflammatory comments. But I don't, so try to ignore them.

The group that was targeted in the first instance included two people that appear to be armed, but it also includes two Reuters reporters carrying cameras that the pilots mistakenly identify as weapons. In fact, when one of the reporters crouches down and pokes his camera around a corner, the pilots report seeing an RPG. Partially mistaken or not, the Apaches opened fire on a group that did in fact include armed men. As tragic as the reporters' deaths are, this seems to me part of the risk assumed by journalists who embed (however informally or momentarily) with combatants on either side. Notably, this seems to be Reuters' position as well, who characterized it as a tragedy, rather than murder as Wikileaks alleges.

A couple of issues do seem to bear consideration. First, these pilots seem awfully eager to engage, and one has to wonder if that eagerness led them to mis-identify the cameras as RPGs. I could be wrong (and I'd welcome correction), but I'd imagine that the pilots may have felt a greater urgency to engage if they believed they were in the threat envelope of RPGs. Eagerness by pilots to engage has led to tragic mistakes elsewhere, and therefore might constitute a problem unto itself.

Nonetheless, there were two guys with weapons there, so it seems reasonable to have engaged. However, I am genuinely at a loss to understand the rationale for firing on the people who arrive in a van following the attack to help the wounded. None were armed. They weren't spotters for other combatants. Their only actions were picking up one of the wounded reporters and moving him towards the van. Am I missing something here? What would the justification have been to engage? I'm not leaping to judgment, but on the face of it this seems outside the line.

Whatever the reality was, whatever events led up to this incident (note that 38 minutes of video were released, of which Wikileaks posted 17), this is an info ops failure. The pilots come across as awfully cavalier, particularly when told there were small children in the van they demolished with 30mm fire. We may be missing a lot of context here, but revelling in the carnage when they weren't under threat seems likely to make that context irrelevant for a lot of people.

So, what do you all think? Were they justified in opening fire on the van? More broadly, is this incident symptomatic of the new pervasiveness of media scrutiny? If so, what are the implications for how we manage our communications?

UPDATE: So as usual I'm behind the curve on this one. Schmedlap started a thread at SWJ that's drawn some informed comments, and Starbuck is all over it. And the report of the Army's investigation ca be found here. Go read those smart people and then come back here and discuss further. H/T to Schmedlap, and thanks to the other insomniacs who've already weighed in.

UPDATE II: Schmedlap has a great post you should all read, especially the section entitled 'Positive Identificaiton (PID) and Basic Human Decency' .

UPDATE III: Foreign Policy has just put out an article about this issue. Remarkably, it manages to radically misquote Anthony Martinez' analysis of the incident in the second paragraph. My contempt for FP deepens.

I guess fact-checkers are too expensive these days

The New York Times has made pretty elementary mistakes on consecutive days in stories related to weapons sales. First, in yesterday's article about accusations of Pakistan illegally modifying American-supplied Harpoon missiles:

American military and intelligence officials say they suspect that Pakistan has modified the Harpoon antiship missiles that the United States sold the country in the 1980s, a move that would be a violation of the Arms Control Export Act. [emphasis mine]

Except that the Arms Control Export Act doesn't exist -- it's the Arms Export Control Act. I noticed this yesterday in the hard copy, and as of this morning they still haven't corrected the electronic version. Yes, this is a simple, stupid mistake, consisting only of the transposition of two words. But their version doesn't even make sense!

So like I said, I noticed that one yesterday and didn't think much of it, assuming that they'd probably fixed it online. And then this morning I see this article, about the Iraqis "finding" a bunch of their old helos in Serbia. What's wrong with this one, you ask?

Lt. Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for the Multi-National Transition and Security Command-Iraq, or M.N.T. S.C.-I., the American military’s training wing, said the discovery of the Iraqi-owned MIGs would not alter any American plans, at least not immediately. “It’s going to take a while to see what impact it has,” he said. [emphasis mine]

Wait, what's that? Mint-ski? I've never heard of that. Oh, you mean the organization colloquially referred to as Min-sticky? Which would only be said that way if, you know, the "S" were in front of the "T"? Oh, yeah, that's because it is. They're actually talking about the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, the organization through which coalition equipment and training is provided to Iraqi security forces. What's most bewildering about this one is that they actually spell out the name of the organization and the acronym, and they get both wrong! And then they repeat the mistake in a quote!

“It’s more than just getting aircraft; there’s maintenance and support structures, training. It’s not going to change what M.N.T.S.C. -I. does,” Colonel Kolb said.

How far the newspaper business has fallen! SNLII, rescue us!