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Monday 9 November 2009

Getting the story

A long but rewarding article by Seth Mnookin on the NY Times' news-gathering operation in Iraq. As outside interest in the country declines, the few remaining western reporters help keep the locals informed about what their government is really up to:

For whatever reason, today there are only a few dozen Western reporters in Iraq, which is not many more than were there during Saddam Hussein’s last days in power, when staying in the country meant risking detention, or worse... I stopped to talk with three middle-class Shiite men in their mid-20s. They told me that if the Western media left they’d have no way of knowing what was really happening in their country. “Even if you are arrogant, your press still reveals the truth,” one of them told me. “The proof of that is your media revealed the scandals of the American military in Abu Ghraib and Basra and Haditha. The Iraqi media cover up the truth. They are working for the government. The Western press are working for themselves.”

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