E&P 'Operation Truth' Profile : 'In Iraq War, Sometimes 'Truth' Hurts

[Hissyspit]

More indictment of consensus U.S. press coverage of the Iraq War in a profile from Editor & Publisher.

Consider this from the below article: "Issues that (Operation Truth founder Lt. Paul) Rieckhoff (an Iraq veteran) says are ripe for exploring in the media include - the high number of wounded soldiers, the true number of military suicides, the Kurdish region, and more feature stories about the ways soldiers are deeply affected by the war."

There is always the truth. No matter how much it gets bent, covered over, buried, blurred, ignored, misinterpreted. It's always there. It doesn't go away. The reason, simply, it's: The truth. Whether it gets reported or not. But what do we do now for 'journalistic integrity,' a real press to report the truth - instead of a press that does not know what to do with itself, in the face of blind militarism/manipulation/lies - question it, exploit it, or serve it - and hasn't known for quite some time.

Isn't that, in a sense, what the lieutenant is asking here through his words and actions?

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000864433

In Iraq War, The 'Truth' Sometimes Hurts
By Brian Orloff
Published: April 01, 2005 11:40 AM ET

NEW YORK Some of the media's toughest critics on Iraq war coverage are soldiers themselves. Paul Rieckhoff, 29, as a U.S. Army first lieutenant and junior officer, was a rifle platoon leader in Iraq last year. Returning home, he founded Operation Truth, aiming to tell the public the truth of the war from a soldier's perspective, often through the media.

"I came back from Iraq a year ago and was frustrated with the way the dialogue was going in this country," Rieckhoff says at his New York City office. "Mainly, there weren't any soldiers represented. You had four-star generals or policy wonks and people on TV who had generally never been to Iraq. Rarely involved in the dialogue were people who had actually been there, especially lower-level people."

Operation Truth's mission is to spotlight soldiers in news reports, connecting reporters to its network of over 400 soldiers, both active duty and vets, and arranged by ZIP code for local angles. "I think the press coverage has improved slightly in the last few months, but altogether in the past year it has been pretty poor," he says. "The sheer number of people they have in Iraq has declined dramatically from the time they started coverage of the war."

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"She actually altered her story to better protect (the soldier's reputation)," he continues, "which is fine morally but at its very basic journalistic integrity, it's absolutely bankrupt. And unfortunately, that's not rare."

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Journalists, he adds, "haven't protected, or embraced, or really publicized" soldiers who have come forward with stories. Many troops are worried that speaking out "is going to affect their career, their families, their livelihood ? and they're scared. The press should be trying to propel those voices and encourage those voices, not necessarily sculpt them, but give them a platform."

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[Tace]

1. Great Story!