Media Mischief

Iran's Got Nukes?

(What, me worry?)

Iran's nuke-loving mullahs can take heart in knowing that Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell is calling on America’s newspaper editors to marshal their resources to stop the possibility of military strikes against Tehran’s bomb-making facilities. His comments reveal much about America's mainstream media.

By David Paulin

Iran’s wacky President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad raves nonstop about building nukes, destroying Israel, and waiting for the coming of the “Twelfth Imam.” Perhaps he’s playing to the local crowd. Perhaps not. Clearly, Americans and their elected representatives have lots to consider in the face of such batty fanaticism in a post-9/11 world.

How should thoughtful Americans stay informed?

Sorry to say it but forget about reading any balanced reporting in America’s newspapers if Greg Mitchell, the editor of the influential trade magazine Editor & Publisher, gets his way.

Who is Greg Mitchell?

For starters, what Mitchell says is noteworthy: Go to any newspaper and you’re likely to see “E&P” on the desks of top editors. And judging from the popularity of Mitchell’s columns, he carries some clout among those editors.

From his E&P soapbox, Mitchell regularly echoes the themes of the angry left: Bush lied about Iraq; the war is a lost cause; the war on terror is a sham.

Now that Iran looks scarier by the day, Mitchell has taken up another cause: He argues that the press must muster all its resources to stop – yes stop -- air strikes or military action against a “trumped up Iran threat.” No matter that neither Mitchell nor any of the media elite he’s addressing were elected to anything.

“Will Press Put out Fire on Iran?” is the title of Mitchell’s April 13th column. Who else but the press can stop Bush? he asks.

Expanding on his claim that the media has such a decision-making role, Mitchell’s reasoning is revealing. “To those who would say that this inflates the power or even role of the press in America today, I would reply: You don't expect the Democrats to keep us out of war, do you? Just as they would not stand up to the president on Iraq for fear of appearing "weak on terror," they would likely be wary of appearing "weak on the Tehran Bomb."

Spicing up his argument with baseball jargon, Mitchell adds that “the media, usually only a middle-reliever or in a mop-up role on this playing field, might have to pitch with the game on the line.”

Say again? One would think America’s editors ought to be considering how to write balanced stories presenting all sides of the issue - so that Americans can make informed decisions in a post-9/11 world filled with abundant dangers: nukes, terrorism, rogue states, Islamist fanaticism.

Certainly, plenty of facts and issues on Iran must be considered – all revolving around what level of risk and instability Americans, Israel, the Middle East and international community are willing to accept.

But to Mitchell, it’s a closed case. Citing varied reports suggesting that Iran is no big deal, Mitchell says a media-sponsored lobbying effort is needed in order to stop the possibility of military action.

Iran’s mullahs must be pleased at winning over E&P.

“The media dropped its guard in the run-up to the attack on Iraq,” Mitchell argues. “Will they redeem themselves if pressure builds for an air strike or war against Iran?” Answering his own question, Mitchell praises some recent reporting that he claims has cast doubts on the need for military action – reporting, to be sure, that agreed with his own views.

Two themes run through Mitchell’s thinking: First, media elites know what’s best for the public. Second, the public is uninformed and stupid.

Regarding the second point, he writes: “Surely the public would not go for a U.S. attack on Iran, given the Iraq disaster? Think again. A new Los Angeles Times poll - taken before the nuclear news from Tehran this week - found that 48% said they would support military action if Iran continues to produce material that could be used to develop nuclear weapons; only 40% said no. One in four would back use of ground troops.”

In many cases, Mitchell is probably speaking to the converted: senior editors like him who came of age during the trauma of the Vietnam War and 1968 Democratic National Convention. Those were indeed troubled times -- an era when more than a few college kids called cops “pigs” and returning Vietnam vets “baby killers.” That’s when journalists like Woodward and Bernstein were heroes: They inspired a generation of kids to go to journalism school.

Now, many of those journalism grads are in top media positions. Unfortunately, many are still living in the 1960’s. Somebody ought to tell Mitchell and his elitist media pals that the mainstream media long ago used up whatever laurels it had.

Times change, something that’s underscored by the top ten jobs Americans now regard with the greatest respect. According to a recent survey by Salery.com and America Online, soldiers come in No. 2 (after physicians). Police officers were No. 8.

And where were journalists? They didn’t make the list. No wonder the public is skeptical about news coming out of Iraq.

How to explain this reversal of fortunes?

The rise of the Internet and blogs, of course, has much to do with it. Both have had a beneficial and democratizing effect on the flow of information -- helping to expose everything from Jayson Blair to Rathergate and untold other instances of shoddy journalism.

E&P Online Editor David S. Hirschman acknowledges as much in a April 14th column that debates the pros and cons of the rise of bloggers and web sites -- whose rising popularity, he notes, has coincided with the mainstream media’s decline. Its title: “Creeping Democracy of Web Influences Print Coverage.”

No kidding.

What caught my eye, however, was this zinger: “So what can newspaper editors and publishers do to reclaim their power as arbiters of public taste? So far that's unclear.” David, I see why Greg hired you.

(This was posted on April 23, 2006, at 4:30 a.m. CST. It's nearly identical to my April 18th post except for some light editing and the addition of hyperlinks.)

"Soldier with a Pen"
The Christian Science Monitor’s Other Freelancer: Steven Vincent

Steven Vincent, a freelance journalist who brought elegant writing and passionate moral clarity to his magazine articles, was kidnapped and murdered in Basra, Iraq, eight months ago. Like Jill Carroll, Vincent freelanced for several publications - including The Christian Science Monitor. Unlike Carroll and most journalists in Iraq, Vincent broke out of mainstream journalistic formulas and biases that have provided a distorted picture of this war. On the third anniversary of Iraq’s April 7th liberation, Vincent’s legacy is worth remembering as questions about the war’s progress inevitably provoke questions about the fairness of the media’s war reporting.

By DAVID PAULIN

Austin, Texas - Jill Carroll wasn't the first freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor to be kidnapped in Iraq. Forgotten amid celebrations over Carroll’s release and the subsequent flap among bloggers over her alleged Chomskyesque political views is the legacy of another occasional freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor: Steven Vincent.

Five months before Carroll's abduction, Vincent, a 49-year-old New York art critic-turned war reporter, was kidnapped with his translator, Nour Itais, off a street in the southern port city of Basra. Vincent suffered the same fate as Carroll’s translator, Allan Enwiyah, after he and Nour were driven away: He was shot in the back and killed. Nour was shot and left for dead; but she survived.

A hawk on the war, Vincent left behind an extraordinary body of work in spite of his untimely death. He was at his best when writing for conservative magazines such as National Review, Front Page, American Enterprise, and Commentary.

Sadly, many obituaries about him failed to give a full picture of the California native, who was the first American journalist murdered in Iraq. It’s no wonder; most of the journalists who wrote those obituaries probably didn’t read magazines with the political orientation of National Review.

A Class Act

Vincent was in a class by himself, however. As Iraq’s security deteriorated, most reporters preferred to stay in the safety of the U.S-fortified "Green Zone”; or they traveled about with bodyguards. In contrast, Vincent traveled throughout the country on his own: No bodyguards, no bullet proof vests; just the company of a translator and maybe a driver. It’s something that Carroll did as well by wearing a Muslim head covering to maintain a low profile. But nobody could quite match Vincent’s insights.

Reporting from the Red Zone, he provided a colorful mix of colorful travelogue, gum-shoe reporting, and razor-sharp analysis that presented Iraq in all its pathologies, danger, and promise. His remarkable book, “In The Red Zone: A Journey Into the Soul of Iraq,” is a must read. At the time of his death, he’d been working on another book.

Time will tell if Iraq indeed turns into the "quagmire" that President Bush’s critics have long maintained (and perhaps wished for) as they've repeatedly evoked the memory of Vietnam. Those critics, it’s fair to say, have more than a few kindred spirits among the mainstream press – reporters who too often have covered the war with formulistic reporting that reflects a simple dictum: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Some can’t be blamed. They’re unable to write any other way thanks to the formulas and constraints of newspaper journalism. In some cases, political biases have determined what stories get told and how they’re told.

One of Jill Carroll’s last Monitor pieces was a case in point: It was a “formula” story about how the highway between Baghdad and the international airport was the most dangerous in Iraq. Journalists and editors love stories like that; those which play up conflict…or call attention to the fact that something is the worst… the best…the most popular…the safest…or most dangerous.

And then there are all those “gotcha” stories; the ones that make policymakers or military commanders look bad by focusing on miscalculations or misconduct - whether they're pieces about detainee abuse or civilian casualties. Not that such stories lack merit; they need to be told. But when such news coverage eclipses the good deeds and justness of the U.S.-led war effort, the question of mainstream media bias becomes a worthy one.

Perhaps the biggest purveyor of disinformation is the Associated Press, the wire service from which most Americans get their news about Iraq, both via newspaper articles and television reports that rely heavily on the AP.

For much of the war, the AP and others in the mainstream media have tended to view Iraq through a filter of grisly suicide bombings and by tallying daily casualties -- all written up from news bureaus situated in the safety of the Green Zone.

The Elusive 'Big Picture'

This brings us to Steven Vincent. Few mainstream reporters have done what he did at his best: present the Big Picture. Vincent did this by viewing Iraq through the lives of ordinary Iraqis. He was unashamed about going beyond “objective” and “factual” reporting. He made judgments.

His approach resulted in a moral clarity that was refreshing in comparison to the journalistic nihilism that portrays all sides as morally equivalent. One egregious example of such “balanced” reporting was pointed out by The Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal.com: A CNN.com story regarding a spate of horrific atrocities in which terrorists sawed off the heads of live hostages. To the CNN.com writer, this posed a vexing – yes vexing -- question: Does beheading civilians qualify as legitimate executions? This is the same CNN, incidentally, that for years turned a blind eye to Saddam Hussein’s ghoulish crimes so that it could maintain its Baghdad bureau and have “access” to Iraq.

When pondering such morally confused journalism, imagine this: What if that CNN.com writer had covered the D-Day landings in Normandy – writing an “objective” story describing only “facts”; but without judgments or any sense of moral self-confidence; as if Germany and America were morally equally -- and both therefore deserving of “balanced” coverage in which Germany is not referred to as the "enemy" but by names that are morally neutral. In Iraq, mainstream reporting has at times had that same morally confused feeling.

No such confusion crept into Vincent's work, however. His readers know exactly where he stood when writing about issues in post-Saddam Iraq affecting Iraqis from all walks of life: shopkeepers, policemen; government officials; those who despised the U.S. presence or were ambivalent; those truly infected with the idea of an Iraqi democracy.

Conversely, AP’s reporters know less about the Red Zone than about their accommodations in the Green Zone where they’re largely confined: "the fifth floor of the Palestine Hotel," according to an article in The New York Times, quoting the AP’s managing editor, Mark Silverman. ("Editors Ponder How to Present a Broad Picture of Iraq," NYT, Aug. 15, 2005.) Silverman also admitted that positive news had indeed been buried in articles.

(The AP and other news organizations rely heavily on Iraqi news assistants and journalists who move about the Red Zone; not surprisingly, they're suffering most of the casualties among media workers.)

Heir to Vietnam Reporting Tradition

In one sense, Vincent was a heir to the tradition of some of the best reporting of the Vietnam War, a conflict in which a handful of idealistic and prescient journalists went beyond official sources and news conferences -- Saigon's so-called "Five O'clock Follies" -- and ventured into the field to see the war up close, through the eyes of American soldiers and Vietnamese.

Long before it was fashionable, they wrote of Vietnam's self-defeating and atrocity-producing polices: free-fire zones; the use of "body counts" to measure military success; the apparent lack of popular support for the U.S. cause; the failure to win "heart and minds" in the countryside. Some of the most interesting early reporting in this regard was in magazines like The New Yorker and Ramparts, the defunct New Left magazine.

On two points, however, those idealistic reporters were dead wrong. Despite Walter Cronkite’s influential but totally inaccurate claims -- following 1968’s Tet Offensive -- that the war could not be won, the scholarship in recent years has argued just the opposite. In fact, the war could have been won; and the popular support against the communist was indeed there. But thanks to this country's loss of political will, addled by a hostile press that failed to present all the truths of that conflict, America pulled out. The resulting loss of U.S. prestige fueled leftist insurgencies for years to come. (“The War We Could Have Won,” Stephen J. Morris, NYT Op-Ed.)

Those Vietnam reporters were left-leaning doves. Vincent was a hawk. Although he didn't vote for Bush, he supported the war, believing it was a legitimate part of the war on terror and "Islamofacism." That recognition came as an epiphany when he watched the Sept. 11 attacks from the rooftop of his apartment building in Manhattan's East Village.

Vincent struck me as a man of the left; but not the left that one sees today. In his articles, Vincent skewered "peace activists" visiting Iraq who cared less about the suffering of ordinary Iraqis than about criticizing the U.S.-led invasion -- or "liberation" -- as he preferred to call it.

In his book and in articles for the National Review, Vincent also criticized the mainstream press for failing to recognize signs of progress in Iraq and for utilizing morally confusing language - including terms like "insurgency," "guerrillas" or even "resistance fighters."

Vincent preferred "paramilitaries." He argued that it "evokes images of anonymous right-wing killers terrorizing a populace in the name of a repressive regime -- which is exactly what the fedayeeen and jihadist are doing" by terrorizing Iraqis with kidnappings, beheadings, and suicide bombings.

Moral Clarity

Writing in the National Review, Vincent expanded on this argument when he framed the fight in Iraq as being similar to the civil rights struggle in the Jim Crow South.

"When gunmen stalk the Iraqi countryside, murdering civilians in the name of 'defending the homeland,' can we not see a modern-day Ku Klux Klan. They, too, were masked; they, too, mounted an 'insurgency'; they, too, sought to reinstate a reactionary regime based on ethnic and religious supremacy," he wrote.

And while many "culturally sensitive" reporters ar reluctant to criticize Arab culture, Vincent zeroed in on what was fueling the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle, whose nihilistic nature has puzzled many journalists: It was a reflection, he wrote in his book, of the all-consuming quest within Arab culture for "honor" and "self-respect."

The fighters "see themselves as tribal warriors engaged in the venerable tradition of honor killings against the biggest tribe of all: America." He faulted the U.S.-led coalition for failing to quickly subdue the Sunni Triangle, which he said allowed tribal groups and the Baath Party to join forces.

And while many reporters focused endlessly on the issue of Iraq's supposedly nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, Vincent dealt with a more interesting aspect of that issue: It was a non-issue to most Iraqis.

Vincent's death, on his third reporting trip, came as the mainstream media was just starting to come under increasing criticism for how it has been covering the war – criticism, to be sure, that persists today. It’s not just Bush supporters and hawks who are upset.

In a little-known meeting in July, 2005, some of the nation's newspaper editors, during a regular meeting with top AP news executives, raised questions about news coverage that had failed to take note of a number of positive developments -- such as the fact that 47 countries had reestablished embassies in Iraq and 3,100 schools had been renovated by coalition forces.

Nobody familiar with Vincent's dispatches would have been surprised. Indeed, an editorial in The Tampa Tribune, struggling to make sense of the war, referred to the raging insurgency but also cited a passage from an article Vincent had in The American Enterprise Magazine: "Baghdad is now choked with traffic. Cell phones have spread like wildfire. And satellite TV dishes sprout from even the most humble mud hovels in the countryside."

"This sounds nothing like the Vietnam quagmire that some Bush critics are beginning to describe," stated the editorial in June, 2005. However, it also called on the Bush administration to be more forthcoming about where things stood in Iraq.

Vincent, to be sure, had in the last months of his life grown increasingly uneasy about how the war was going.

“America rid us of one tyrant, only to give us hundreds more in the form of terrorists,” he quoted one man as saying in Umm Qasr, a port city near Kuwait, in an article in National Review.

In his book, he elaborated: "Were we wrong in Iraq? Yes, in one major sense, beyond even the shortage of troops, failure to anticipate the Baathist-led insurrection and Abu Ghraib: we did not, and still don't understand the regressive, parasitical, unreasonable presence of tribal Islam - the black hole in Iraqi and Arab cultures that consumes their best and most positive energies. Because of our blindness, we find ourselves fighting an enemy we do not see, comprehend, or even accurately identify."

He nonetheless argued that much still depended on America's willingness to "stay the course."

Vincent’s murder occurred just three days after he published an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times criticizing the increasing infiltration of the Basran police force by Islamic extremists. Amid Basra’s repressive religious atmosphere, he wrote, most police officers were putting their faith in the mosque – not the state. In his Op-Ed, he blamed British troops who had secured the city.

“Fearing to appear like colonial occupiers, they avoid any hint of ideological indoctrination: in my time with them, not once did I see an instructor explain such basics of democracy as the politically neutral role of the police in a civil society,” wrote Vincent, whose murder remains unsolved.

So much for nation building.

Vincent left behind his wife, Lisa Ramaci Vincent. One neighborhood newspaper in New York had a fitting farewell headline for him: “Soldier with a Pen.”

It was a fitting description: Rest in Peace Steven Vincent. ____________________________________________

Additional information and reading:

*See my story focusing mainly on Steven Vincent's widow, Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, "Honoring Her Husband's Pledge," published at the Big Carnival and in an expanded version at FrontPage Magazine. The Big Carnival post also contains a number of links of interest regarding Steven Vincent

*Steven Vincent’s book: “In the Red Zone: A Journey Into the Soul of Iraq,” is available from Spence Publishing for $10 - an online special more than one half off the regular retail price.

*The Steven Vincent Foundation: Established by Steven’s widow, Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, the foundation provides financial aid to families of murdered Third World freelance journalists, photographers, translators, and other media workers. Funds also are provided to improve the conditions of women in the Islamic world, an issue that was close to Steven’s heart. As of April, 2006, the foundation had distributed several thousand dollars to people in Iraq, Iran, and Bangladesh. Checks should be made out to “The Steven Vincent Foundation” and mailed to: The Steven Vincent Foundation, 534 East 11th Street, Suite 17-18, New York, NY, 10009. Donations via Paypal (www.paypal.com) should be e-mailed to: stevenvincentfoundation@yahoo.com. Lisa Ramaci-Vincent talks about the foundation in an interview, here.

UPDATE: Steven Vincent was one of two freelance journalists honored in 2006 with the Fifth Annual Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism. Vincent was recognized posthumously for his work reveling the existence of police death squads in Iraq. Vincent’s widow, Lisa Ramaci, will receive the award and a $5,000 prize during ceremonies in London. The Kesher Talk blog has more here and here.

The Jill Carroll/Jordan Times Connection: It's Worse Than Her Critics Imagine

The Jordan Times may indeed be an anti-Semitic and anti-American rag. Aren't most papers in the Middle East? But Jill Carroll shouldn’t necessarily be judged harshly for working there. She was doing what most would-be foreign correspondents do these days – using a job at a foreign English-language paper as a springboard into Big Time journalism. Indeed, lots of foreign reporting you read in major papers like The New York Times is not, in fact, always written by veteran staff reporters – it's written by young expat journalists like Carroll, working at foreign English-language papers. Don’t believe me? Read on…

By David Paulin
Austin, Texas -- Jill Carroll may or may not be guilty of the poisonous anti-Americanism that some bloggers accuse her of harboring. Certainly blogger Debbie Schlussel has been raising troubling questions about Carroll.

Like many folks I'm withholding my judgment for the time being. But in respect to one of Schlussel's accusations - that Carroll should be judged harshly for having worked at an "anti-Semitic" and "anti-American" rag like The Jordan Times - I give Carroll a pass for the moment.

The reason, though, is probably worse than anything Schlussel imagines: Carroll’s sojourn to Baghdad, via The Jordan Times, has in fact become an accepted career path in recent years for would-be foreign correspondents: those with no hope of getting a foot in the door at a news service or big-time paper, one that might eventually send them abroad.

And there’s one reason for this: profits. Once upon a time, top U.S. newspapers had lots of foreign news bureaus all over the world; and they didn’t rely on freelancers like Carroll to the extent they do today. Rather, they sent their best reporters to work in them – once those reporters, of course, had proved their mettle at home. Over the past couple of decades, however, most of those overseas bureaus have disappeared - thanks to an ongoing quest to maintain profits amid declining readership and advertising revenues.

The upshot: Papers increasingly rely on freelancers and “contract” reporters; and the way that many people get those jobs is to do what Carroll did: They go abroad and work at an English-language newspaper, get their feet wet, and then start freelancing. In the capitals of most non-English speaking countries, there’s usually one English-language paper. Whether it’s the Mexico City News, Prague Post, Caracas Daily Journal…or The Jordan Times.

Papers such as these attract Brits and Americans with varying levels of journalism skills, all with the hope of leveraging their experience into a big-time reporting gig. That’s the route Carroll took after getting laid off from The Wall Street Journal, where she’d worked as a reporting assistant.

By her own account, Carroll always wanted to be a foreign correspondent. She figured that war in Iraq was inevitable; and wanting to have a piece of that action, she got a job at The Jordan Times, a stepping stone on the way to Baghdad.

Carroll learned a bit of Arabic, did some freelance reporting on the side and, basically, positioned herself for her eventual relocation to Iraq where reporters – including many freelance reporters – would be in demand. And like most freelance foreign correspondents, Carroll presumably hoped her freelancework would eventually lead to a full-time staff position. Nobody, after all, likes the irregular pay and lack of benefits that go hand in hand with freelance journalism.

Perhaps Carroll shared The Jordan Times' toxic political views; perhaps she played along with them or looked the other way (the same as many reporters do at papers all over the world, so long as they feel that their own work is not compromised and retains enough integrity to enable them to live with themselves).

I can identify with Carroll because I took the same career path she did in the mid-1990s: I was in my mid-thirties, with 10-plus years of journalism experience, but my career was in a giant stall. So I headed to Caracas, Venezuela, and landed a job at The Daily Journal, an English-language paper. In the past, the paper had served as a springboard for many young journalists -- mainly young Americans and Brits just a few years out of college; and usually with limited journalism experience but with talent and pluck.

Did I mention my salary at The Daily Journal? Strictly local wages: $330 a month. (Yes, a month.) But once I knew my way around, understood the culture, and spoke enough Spanish to get by, I quickly started freelancing on the side for some major regional papers in the U.S.

Within a few years, my freelance work was generating a decent U.S.-level salary. I moved to one of the best sections of Caracas and contemplated how to make the jump to a big-time staff position in the states. There are lots of reporters in Caracas today just like Carroll: green, ambitions, and freelancing for major papers – all while working for The Daily Journal.

Just for fun, next time you see a Caracas dateline with an unfamiliar byline in the venerable New York Times, Google the name: You might just find that the reporter is not in fact a venerable ‘Timesman’ drawing on years of experience to cover one of Latin America’s hotspot: He’s a Daily Journal reporter who is freelancing on the side for the Gray Lady.

Not long ago, I saw an interesting story in The New York Times out of Prague. Curious about the reporter, I Googled his name. Sure enough, he worked at the Prague Post, a daily newspaper.

Call it Big Media’s bait and switch: The New York Times and a slew of other news outlets (Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Cox News Service, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsday, The Washington Times, etc.) all pretend the freelancers they’re using are staff writers. In fact, many of those freelancers probably lack enough job experience, fancy education, contacts, or whatever, to even get a job interview at those elite papers (assuming those papers are even hiring, which they probably aren’t).

Jill Carroll, to be sure, was on the green side herself. She was in the process of proving herself at The Wall Street Journal in her reporting assistant job. Once Carroll was in Iraq, however, papers eager for coverage they could call their own suddenly could care less about having a veteran reporter covering the biggest story since the end of the Cold War.

Jill Carroll’s experience was good enough. In addition to reporting, incidentally, many of the young reporters at English-language papers work as“fixers;” that’s journalistic lingo for news assistant. And despite their limited experience, they can, as fixers, play major roles in shaping stories while in the service of big-time staff reporters. They may decide who to interview for a story, set up interviews, and perhaps they’ll even do the interviews. In a sense, these young reporters are the weakest link in the news gathering process - yet another scam in Big Media that I recently wrote about for Editor & Publisher.

Did I mention how a few major newspapers identified me when I freelanced for them? Writing for the Boston Globe, I was a “Globe Correspondent.” At the San Francisco Chronicle, it was David Paulin/Chronicle Foreign Service. The Dallas Morning News, I should note, was one of the few papers for which I wrote that, at the end of my stories, identified me for what I was: “a freelance journalist based in Caracas.”

Fortunately for Carroll, The Christian Science Monitor hired her one week after she was kidnapped -- an interesting turn of events that was announced a few days ago. However, one has to wonder if Carroll would have been kidnapped in the first place had she been a staff reporter all along -- enjoying the support and protection that’s available to staff reporters but that’s not generally available to freelancers.

As for her murdered translator, Allan Enwiyah, it’s probable he would have died no matter what Carroll’s employment status. After all, Iraqi news assistants, reporters, and translators are doing most of the dying in Iraq, a fact made clear in statistics provided here by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Welcome to Big Media's approach to foreign reporting.

Jill Carroll's kidnapping: A black eye for mainstream media's use of freelancers

Jill Carroll, the freelance journalist kidnapped in Baghdad nearly three months ago, was freed today. In the coming days, the mainstream media will thoroughly examine her capture and ordeal. But one thing will be left out: its own role in her kidnapping and the murder of her translator, thanks to policies revolving around its use - and misuse - of freelancers.

By David Paulin
Austin, Texas -- Jill Carroll, the 28-year-old freelance journalist kidnapped in Baghdad nearly three months ago, was attempting to make her mark in journalism by going to Iraq. She had always wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and in the months ahead of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Carroll, who had been laid off at The Wall Street Journal, figured the Middle East was the place to go.

Carroll was released today. Her translator, Allan Enwiyah, was not as lucky. He was shot and killed when the car in which he and Carroll were riding was intercepted in broad daylight.

Carroll has yet to speak publicly. But one thing is certain: Apart from her extraordinary mettle, she appears in many ways to be a typical of the freelance foreign correspondents on which news outlets have increasingly relied in recent years; and herein are some dirty little secrets of the media industry.

Faced with plummeting advertising revenues, media organizations have slashed their staffs and operating budgets in the past couple of decades in pursuit of ever greater profits. One of the causalities have been foreign news bureaus. As a consequence, many outlets have turned increasingly to freelancers like Carroll. Compared to staff writers, they're cheap.

Carroll freelanced for The Christian Science Monitor and several other publications -- in other words, she got paid per article. I don't know what she was earning. But as a former freelance foreign correspondent who has written for some of the same publications as Carroll, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe and Platts Oilgram News, I assume she got a few hundred dollars per article. It's really not much for a multi-source showcase piece, written from a war zone amid myriad inconveniences and risks: electrical outages, irregular phone service, and vicious Muslim terrorists not inclined to look kindly upon an American woman writing for a paper called The Christian Science Monitor, for which she'd been working "on assignment" (to use the lexicon of freelance journalism).

Clearly, idealism, ambition, and a spirit of adventure are the motivating forces driving Carroll and other freelancers working abroad. And more than a few are encouraged by editors who suggest their freelancing may eventually lead to staff positions with a regular salary and usual benefits – the very things one expects in any decent job, whether an office...or a coal mine.

Carroll would have enjoyed none of the benefits enjoyed by staff writers in Iraq: No bullet-proof vests; no war-zone training; no armed guards. Forget about insurance of any kind. (The Christian Science Monitor, to be sure, has yet to comment publicly on these issues; however, it appears she was not treated like a typical freelancer.) Even so, she was on her own, living in what The New York Times described as a modest "threadbare" room -- all for the love of journalism. (See correction/author's note, below.)

There's a certain hypocrisy at play when one compares the media's attitude toward freelancers like Carroll against the values it professes as a noble and vigilant watchdog of the public's trust. Consider the mining accident at the Sago mine in West Virginia, which occurred just days before Carroll's kidnapping. The mainstream media quickly raised its collective voice in anger over every hint of safety violations at the mine. Yet when it comes to journalists like Carroll, it tolerates and even encourages the same abuses it gleefully excoriates in those who fall into its journalistic cross hairs.

The public hasn't a clue about what's going on. The average reader would never suspect Carroll's freelance status by looking at her byline in The Christian Science Monitor or other publications for which she wrote. Most would assume she was part of the paper's foreign staff.

In Iraq and elsewhere, Carroll was part of what might be called a three-tier system of news gathering; it enables news outlets to cut cost and boost profits, all while delivering a credible product.

Staff reporters are in the top tier. They earn decent salaries and get a variety of benefits. Next are freelancers along with "contract" reporters. Freelancers are paid per article; contract reporters get a salary but one that's probably below what a staff reporter gets. There are no benefits. And as many editors will tell new contract reporters, they're responsible for paying their taxes when living abroad (wink, wink). I say this based on my own experience as a contact reporter in Jamaica for the Associated Press. I worked there for a few months in 2001 until leaving (full disclosure here) after a row with a news editor.

On the bottom rung are news assistants or "fixers" who, in places like Iraq, are Iraqis. (See my article from Editor & Publisher, here.) Fixers may set up interviews and help with translation; they'll serve as guides and may even do a bit of reporting despite limited journalism training. In Iraq, they've become vital. That's especially so for the Associated Press, whose staff reporters tend to stay holed up in the safety of their offices in the U.S.-controlled "Green Zone."

Not surprisingly, Iraqi fixers are taking the bulk of the risk, and doing most of the dying. According to the Society of Professional Journalists, more than 20 news assistants have been killed in the line of duty in Iraq since 2003, including 20 Iraqis and one Lebanese. During the same period, 55 journalists have been killed in the performance of their jobs - 65 percent or 36 of whom were Iraqis. Only two were Americans. Nine were from Europe and the rest form other countries including the Middle East, according to SPJ

That Iraqi fixers or news assistants are dying in the greatest numbers is another of the news media's dirty little secrets. Like freelancers and contract reporters, they generally work without benefits or insurance; there are just a handful of exceptions. Yet they are at the greatest risks because of Iraq's sectarian and political violence; not to mention widespread Internet access, which exposes fixers to retaliation when stories they played a part in are posted on media web sites.

Last August, Steven Vincent, an American freelance journalist who wrote for several conservative publications, was kidnapped with his translator, Nour Itais. Vincent was shot to death; Nour shot and left for dead. The incident occurred just three days after Vincent had published an Op-Ed in The New York Times criticizing the increasing infiltration of the Basran police force by Islamic extremists.

When put within a certain context, there is more than just a little hypocrisy here. What, after all, would happen if the news media in Iraq learned U.S. military commanders were sending African-American and Hispanic soldiers on its most dangers missions -- while keeping white troops confined to secure bases? Such a revelation would ignite a journalistic feeding frenzy. On the other hand, there's little if any public soul searching by the media in respect to its relationship to its fixers and freelancers.

Is Iraq an aberration in this respect? I doubt it. During my reporting days in Jamaica, for example, the Associated Press issued me a bullet proof vest. I needed it because gritty sections of Jamaica's capital, Kingston, occasionally descend into raging civil conflict, with violent inner-city gangs, divided along political lines and with loose ties to local politicians, engaging in bloody shoot-outs.

Interestingly, however, no bullet proof vests were issued to the AP's local freelance photographer or freelance correspondent. Yet when the photographer expressed the least bit of hesitation about covering a nasty shootout or violent demonstration, the AP's top two editors in its Caribbean bureau were upset. They intimated he had a yellow streak and talked of getting rid of him.

Both of these guys were black Jamaicans and thus were at a far greater risk than me, a white American; for they could easily be mistaken for combatants when covering a spasm of unrest on an island whose population is overwhelmingly black. It's the same situation for all those Iraqi news assistants - a fact underscored by the way Carroll's kidnappers wasted no time in shooting her translator in the head.

What would Al Sharpton make of all this?

CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and the Miami Herald are reportedly among a few news outlets that, in some ways, treat their fixers as employees – a practice that nevertheless is not widespread, according to an article titled “The Fixers” in the current issue of Dangerous Assignments, published by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In that same article, Mark Seibel, managing international editor of Knight-Ridder's Washington Bureau, expressed uncertainty about the obligations media outlets have toward protecting their fixers. "The relationship is informal contract labor,” he observed. “How far should an international news organization go to help them? There is probably a need to review and go over polices.”

For Seibel to suggest he has given no thought to this is puzzling. A highly capable editor, Seibel has spent most of his career with Knight-Ridder; and that includes during the years the news chain eliminated numerous foreign bureaus and came to rely on freelancers such as me: I was the Caracas correspondent for The Herald's international edition for four years in the late 1990's, an edition for which Seibel was responsible.

It was a great job. Hugo Chavez was coming to power, and Seibel put my name on the edition's masthead. And although the señoritas were impressed, the fact is I was just a freelancer, a guy making an irregular salary who had no benefits.

When my apartment was robbed and laptop stolen, The Herald could have cared less. I had hoped the paper might have an old laptop lying around to send me. But Seibel's comment, which a sympathetic editor relayed to me, was the same one he offered to Dangerous Assignments: We don't have a policy on that.

As to Jill Carroll, it will be interesting to see how much The Christian Science Monitor and others for which she freelanced will do to help her out at this point. Will anybody offer her a fulltime job? It was certainly decent of The Monitor's editors, days after her kidnapping, to prevail upon news outlets to impose a limited black out on reporting her name and media affiliation, the idea being that this might afford her some protection from Muslim fanatics.

My own sense was the Carroll was pretty much on her own during her freelancing career and kidnapping ordeal. It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out.

Related reading: "The Jill Carroll/Jordan Times Connection: It's Worse Than Her Critics Imagine."


May 9, 2006
Correction/Author’s Note:
A staff reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, Dan Murphy, recently e-mailed me from Baghdad to protest how I described The Monitor’s relationship with Jill Carroll.

Murphy disputed my contention that Carroll, during her freelancing days with The Monitor, endured the hardscrabble life of a typical freelancer – living on her own in a budget hotel, and enjoying none of the same benefits as the Monitor’s staff reporters.

Carroll, to be sure, had lived such a life for at least one year in Baghdad – a life she described in a colorful article in last year’s February/March issue of American Journalism Review. But when she started freelancing for The Monitor in mid-February, the paper took the unusual step of providing her the same benefits as staffers, even though it compensated her as a freelancer – in other words, paying her for each article. She “had access to precisely the same security arrangements and insurance cover that our staffers enjoyed,” Murphy insisted. She also started to live at The Monitor’s rented hotel facilities, which serve as housing and editorial offices, he said.

I have no reason to disbelieve Murphy. My suggestion that Carroll continued to live a hand-to-mouth existence, while freelancing for The Monitor, should have been more circumspect given what was known -- and unknown – at the time I wrote this article, not long after Carroll’s kidnapping.

That said, the article’s main theme – the mainstream media’s exploitation of freelancers – remains accurate. Readers can decide for themselves whether The Monitor’s unusual relationship with an accomplished but young journalist like Carroll, providing her employee benefits but paying her as a freelancer, was part of the cost-cutting trends I criticized. Even so, there’s no denying that The Monitor treated Carroll better than other news outlets for which she freelanced.

In preparing this article, I should note that not long after Carroll’s kidnapping, I exchanged e-mails with Monitor Editor Richard Bergenheim. But citing the precariousness of Carroll’s situation, he declined to clarify his paper’s relationship with her, saying only that my “assumptions…about our relations with and treatment of Jill are wrong.”

With Bergenheim declining to elaborate, I was left with Carroll’s account in AJR. A quick Google search for her byline prompted me to infer, mistakenly, that she was freelancing for The Monitor when she wrote that piece. Reinforcing my assumption that Carroll endured a hardscrabble freelancer’s life, while writing for The Monitor, was a piece in The New York Times: “For Freelancer Held Hostage, Caution Fell Short,” published Jan. 23, 2006.

It referred to Carroll’s “threadbare” and “inexpensive” hotel room – a description that echoed what Carroll had described in her AJR article. To me this suggested Carroll, despite Bergenheim’s claims to the contrary, was still pretty much on her own. In fact, as Murphy pointed out, her “threadbare” room was at The Monitor’s rented hotel facilities – a detail The Times’ article omitted.

Murphy, incidentally, objected to The Times’ description of Carroll’s room, noting author Sabrina Tavernise never visited it. Tavernise told me in an e-mail from Baghdad that an Iraqi reporter and photographer employed by The Times had visited the room and described it to her.

Yet another detail that was unknown to me is that after Carroll’s kidnapping, The Monitor secretly added her to its reporting staff. This, Murphy explained, was to ensure she had a financial “cushion” after her release. The Monitor waited until after her release to publicize this, he explained, because of concerns that revealing this while she was in captivity would jeopardize her situation with her kidnappers.

Murphy, incidentally, declined to answer my question about how much Carroll earned per article, saying he was “not going to tell you or anyone else.” But another Monitor freelancer, the late Steven Vincent, earned $300 apiece for three articles "if I remember rightly," said his widow, Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, in an e-mail to me.