[fintstone]

The press is getting on the bandwagon...none want to be the last one falsely reporting the situation in Iraq.

Washington Times
December 7, 2005
Pg. 20

On Balance

The first in a series of editorials on underreported good news from Iraq.

If Washington seems increasingly pessimistic about Iraq these days, Iraqis themselves aren't. In fact, 47 percent of Iraqis surveyed by the International Republican Institute in October said that the country is headed in the right direction (37 percent said it wasn't). That's a higher percentage than last year, when 42 percent of Iraqis thought so (45 percent did not) -- despite the problematic ongoing security problems. Here are some of the underreported reasons why.

*Education. Primary-school enrollment has jumped 20 percent over the Saddam years, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index. In a country where 22 percent of adults never attended school, according to the International Monetary Fund, this is a momentous change. It's also a change going almost entirely unreported by U.S. news organizations. A Lexis-Nexis search for the terms "Iraq" and "school" or "schools" in the last month in the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle turns up 331 articles. None is about schools in Iraq. The terms "Iraq" and "Ministry of Education" show up only four times in the last year. Only one story covered the Iraqi education ministry.

*Gross Domestic Product. Iraq's GDP rebounded by an estimated 50 percent in 2004, according to the IMF, mostly due to increased oil revenues. About one-third of Iraqis are unemployed -- an alarming rate -- but this is sigificantly better than two years ago, when half or more of Iraqis were unemployed. A Lexis-Nexis search shows that the terms "Iraq" and "GDP" or "Gross Domestic Product" appeared together in the above papers in just 10 articles in the last month. Only two actually discussed Iraq's GDP.

None of which readers of major American newspapers would know unless they consult other sources.

Washington Times
December 9, 2005
Pg. 22

On Balance

Despite the ongoing insurgent violence, the amenities of modern life are spreading to places in Iraq where they never previously existed. For instance, Iraq's telephone subscriptions have increased five-fold since Saddam Hussein's fall, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq index.

Automobile traffic, too, has increased dramatically -- by five times, according to Brookings. The number of cars registered in Baghdad have more than doubled.

If this unprecedented consumer success seems newsworthy, most American newspapers judged it otherwise. A Lexis-Nexis search for "Iraq" and "traffic" in the last month turns up 57 entries, but only one actually mentions traffic in Iraq, and it reports not on Baghdad's traffic but the lack thereof during an election. Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times reports seeing a traffic-free Jadriyah neighborhood in Baghdad on election day -- an aberration, since local police and coalition forces mandate traffic restrictions during elections. Iraqi telephone connectivity went similarly underreported in the same period.

Washington Times
December 12, 2005
Pg. 22

On Balance

There aren't many mentions of Najaf in headlines these days. That's a good thing: The city's security situation is vastly improved, and so Najaf is less interesting to the media.

Najaf topped headlines in mid-2004, when the Shi'ite holy city suffered protracted battles between coalition forces and Moqtada al Sadr's al-Mahdi Army, whose uprising centered upon Najaf. These days, U.S. forces are 40 minutes outside the city because of improved security, something President Bush highlighted before the Council on Foreign Relations last week.

As Brig. Gen. Augustus L. Collins, head of the 155th Brigade Combat Team responsible for security in Babil, Karbala and Najaf provinces, told reporters via satellite on Friday: "Actually, the attacks that we have now compared to attacks we had when we first got here and took over our battlespace in February are at least down by 50 percent," he said. Gen. Collins reports that his men have captured 1,500 insurgents and confiscated 2,800 weapons.

For decades, the predominantly Shi'ite city was terrorized by Saddam Hussein's thugs. Then, after the war, it was the site of protracted battles. Now Najaf has an elected government and political campaigns.

Washington Times
December 8, 2005
Pg. 22

On Balance

Whatever happened to Baghdad's infamous airport road? "Route Irish," so named for the Fighting 69th, which patrolled it until recently, is still the only way to reach the capital by air. But it has dropped from the headlines -- because it is now relatively safe.

A year ago, the Baghdad airport road became the greatest symbol of supposed American failure in Iraq because of a rash of bombing and shootouts, including incidents that caused 37 deaths in April and the tragic mistaken killing of Italian agent Nicola Calipari. But last month, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told the Associated Press that only one injury occurred on the road in October; there were no killings. He called the airport road "one of the most safe and secure routes in all of Iraq."

People who missed the one Associated Press story on the subject are not likely to read about it elsewhere. Our search for press mentions of "Route Irish" in the last six months turned up just two references in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle.

In late 2004 and the first half of 2005, these newspapers lavished coverage on the Baghdad airport road. They made eight mentions of it from November 2004 to June 2005, according to our Lexis-Nexis search.