Remember when reporters like Nic Robertson used to do live reports...

[NNN0LHI]

...in the streets of Baghdad since the invasion? Bob Arnot used to do it a lot too. There were others, and they had heavy security with them but no one does it any more. They all report from behind bunkers these days. Usually with flak jackets and a helmet on. WTF? I thought things were really shaping up over there? Am I right, or I have I just been missing these types of reports lately?

Don

[maddezmom]

1. the only one I see is Jane Araf

but then I only get CNNI

[xultar]

2. Well things are going well if you like Shrapnel or Lead in your diet. n/t

[THUNDER HANDS]

3. I was wondering about that too

Where's Peter Arnette lately. I miss him since MSNBC canned him.

[KharmaTrain]

4. Saigon Syndrome

Most of these networks have small staffs that are hunkered down in the hotels (Palestine and Al Rasheed) in Baghdad...part for security, the other due to the nature of their beast. They have to be "online" 24/7...close to their uplink in case of another explosion...as well as monitoring other news sources (Arab TV). I don't think CNN has a staff of more than a dozen in Baghdad and relies on free-lancers and other news agencies for reports outside of the city.

Going outside un-protected areas is costly and downright dangerous right now...especially for an underground that would love to bag headlines by nailing a western journalist. On the other side, we are seeing that the Pentagon has put a real lid on coverage of the military's actions inside Iraq. When's the last time you saw a report filed on what a GI Joe or Jane was up to in Tikrit? The word, I'm sure, is travel at your own risk...going with "paid" locals into unknown areas. Few journalists are that intrepid...especially with an American accent.

Arnot is the anti-Arnett. Notice how he's been quiet lately, since his pal David Kay came up empty. His "street" reporting was always tied to some military or occupation event (kissing Bremmer's ass) and little else. His shilling and propaganda during the invasion was some of the worst. I did notice he got especially quiet after a bombing attack at a hotel he was staying at (the one that almost nailed Wolfy)...maybe he's not as sold on this "grand adventure" as he once was.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Real good answer n/t

[Sticky]

6. The good doctor was fired.

Bob Arnot, the medical doctor turned foreign correspondent for MSNBC and NBC News—the onetime chief medical correspondent "Dr. Bob" on NBC News, who has been filing prickly, Geraldo-like dispatches from Iraq—has been conspicuously absent from TV lately. Dr. Arnot’s contract was up at NBC in December 2003 and, according to the network, won’t be renewed in the foreseeable future.

Dr. Arnot did not leave willingly.

Although personal, his departure has also exposed the divides over TV coverage of the war in Iraq.

In a 1,300-word e-mail to NBC News president Neal Shapiro, written in December 2003 and obtained by NYTV, Dr. Arnot called NBC News’ coverage of Iraq biased. He argued that keeping him in Iraq and on NBC could go far in rectifying that. Dr. Arnot told Mr. Shapiro that NBC had alienated the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since it shot and then aired footage of correspondent Jim Miklaszewski at the scene of the November bombing of the Al Rashid Hotel, in which a C.P.A. staffer was shown injured. That incident, he wrote, "earned the undying enmity of the C.P.A."

http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=8622

[NNN0LHI]

7. Thanks for that info about the scumbag Arnot n/t