A Little PR in the Night

The "Truth Tour" folks are back, unharmed and still exhilarated. Actually known as the Voices for Soldiers Truth Tour, this project of Move America Forward aimed "to get the news straight from our troops serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, including the positive developments and successes they are achieving."

Since this was also a morale-boosting trip giving regular servicemembers cookies, coffee, and a chance to talk on the radio, I wouldn't have any problem with it if it weren't that the rhetoric of so many trip-supporters was as heated as Iraq in July. My favorite example from the Radio Equalizer: "The onslaught really became personal, as [KSFO-AM/San Francisco morning host Melanie] Morgan's news credentials were attacked and one site begged Iraqi terrorists to kidnap the group." Said "site" was actually a discussion in which one of 62 posts said: "I hope the insurgency, er, freedom fighters are taking notes and planning a kidnaping or two." Five other posts compared the tour to This Is Spinal Tap, so you know just how serious they were.

Both sides could afford to cool off a bit. We could all do with a nice human interest story about a young girl able to walk again because of treatment at the American medical center; she had been badly burned in an ambush, and Iraqi doctors had been unable to do more than bandage her up and send her home. We don't need to go into the particulars of why there was an ambush, or why the local doctors didn't have medical supplies, to appreciate "this Iraqi child who had won their hearts with her courage."

We used to get more of these feel-good stories earlier in the post-invasion period. "I would love to write about new schools being built and local village leaders learning about democracy, but I can’t go out to see such things," writes Newsweek's Joe Cochrane on his return to Baghdad after 18 months.

The security situation has deteriorated so badly that journalists rarely venture out unless they’re embedded with U.S. soldiers. That wasn’t the case early last year, when foreigners could walk the streets outside the Green Zone, shop in local markets, and, most important to journalists, talk to the Iraqi people. Those days are long gone.

To call the MAF tour an exercise in good PR is not to condemn it. Look at any newspaper, magazine or news show, and there will be a mix of "hard" and "soft" news. To a great extent, the latter is helped along -- often instigated -- by public relations professionals (usually identified as "the spokesperson"). All those celebrity interviews, Krispy Kreme store openings, baby animals at the local zoo, "typical" organ transplant patients that are doing just fine, and so many other feature stories start with a press release, a phone call and/or an invitation to "a media event." (The promise of free food helps; why do you think there were so many stories about Krispy Kreme doughnut stores?)

State-side news packages have their mix of soft features in among the "hard news" of crime, corruption and other ills of society that the public has a right to know about. It doesn't threaten the integrity of war journalism to hear that American soldiers have "adopted" an Iraqi orphanage in the Red Zone. But it does nothing to change the reality of the latest reports on massive multi-million-dollar corruption or the US meddling in Iraqi elections. The "truth" is complex, not something to be easily found in a quick visit constantly surrounded and protected by soldiers.

Addendum: Shortly after posting, I caught a Knight Ridder story about Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi's visit to Musayyib, south of Baghdad. The sense of suffering in this little farm town is palpable, with mothers attempting to save their children by tossing them from burning buildings, an Iraqi doctor performing 20 operations in one night, police scavenging ammunition from the better-equipped terrorists. Chalabi, no stranger to good PR, tried to find a bright spot.

Chalabi wanted to squeeze in a trip to the crown jewel of local reconstruction, a new power plant and refinery that will process thousands of barrels of crude oil a day once completed and give a much-needed boost to Iraq's dilapidated electrical grid....

But at the plant he learned that only a handful of workers had shown up for work Monday.

"Right now," said Carl Bloomfield, a West Virginian who serves as the project's superintendent, "I don't know how many of my workers got killed."