Review Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, embedded, The Media At War In Iraq, an oral history, The Lyons Press, 2003

 

Katovsky, Bill and Carlson, Timothy, embedded, The Media At War In Iraq, an oral history, The Lyons Press, 2003

 

Embedded, The Media At War In Iraq, an oral history is an anthology of 51 journalists and others who were involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Some of the reporters were embedded with U.S. and British forces. Others went into Iraq on their own and were called unilaterals. Like any collection the stories vary widely from the exciting to the mundane.

Review Richard Engel, War Journal, My Five Years In Iraq, Simon & Schuster, 2008

Engel, Richard, War Journal, My Five Years In Iraq, Simon & Schuster, 2008

 

NBC News correspondent Richard Engel’s War Journal My Five Years In Iraq gives a different perspective from other books on the Iraq War. It’s not a history full of details. It’s not a soldier’s story about combat. It gives a Western journalist’s view of the conflict mixed in with the experiences of the Iraqis that he worked with. It reads like a journal and has some very interesting parts to it especially about the everyday brutality journalists and Iraqis had to live through during the civil war years.

Review Iraq and the war on terror, Twelve months of insurgency 2004/2005

Rogers, Paul, Iraq and the war on terror, Twelve months of insurgency 2004/2005, London New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006

 

During the Iraq War the Oxford Research Group would issue monthly reports on developments in that conflict and the state of terrorism in general. Iraq and the war on terror, Twelve months of insurgency 2004/2005 by Paul Rogers collects together several of those reports from 2004-2005. Those were probably very informative when they came out but today they are a bit dated.

Review A Time Of Our Choosing, America’s War In Iraq

Purdum, Todd, A Time Of Our Choosing, America’s War In Iraq, New York: Times Books, 2003

 

A Time Of Our Choosing, America’s War In Iraq was a disappointing read. Rather than being informative it showed all the faults of how the U.S. media covered the 2003 invasion. Written by New York Times Washington bureau chief Todd Purdum it largely presented the Bush administration’s argument for the war with no analysis and only a few criticisms and then gave the military’s view of the war. Most importantly it never really explained why the White House decided that Iraq was the number one threat to the country.

Review So Wrong For So Long, How The Press, The Pundits – And The President – Failed On Iraq

Mitchell, Greg, So Wrong For So Long, How The Press, The Pundits – And The President – Failed On Iraq, New York, London: Union Square Press, 2008

 

So Wrong For So Long is a very disappointing read. From the title I thought this was a critique of the media coverage of the Iraq War. It turned out to be a collection of editorials by the author Greg Mitchell from 2003-2007. The book was aimed at the failure of the American press to ask questions about the war but the anthology was very inconsistent. Some of the pieces were incisive but many were not. In the end, it’s not worth reading.

Review Weapons of Mass Persuasion, Marketing the War Against Iraq

Rutherford, Paul, Weapons of Mass Persuasion, Marketing the War Against Iraq, Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2004

 

Weapons of Mass Persuasion, Marketing the War Against Iraq by Professor Paul Rutherford of the University of Toronto is a very uneven and unsatisfactory read. The author attempts to explain how the 2003 invasion of Iraq was sold by the Bush administration. He argues that the state has been able to adopt modern methods of marketing to sell its policies and shape public opinion which is a threat to democracy but then says the government can only promote things that the public already believes in.

UN Report On Iraq’s Kurdistan Limiting Freedom Of Expression And Press

Protest in Sulaymaniya 2020 (Anadolu Agency)

 

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) recently had a high profile case where it sentenced five activists and journalists to six years each on trumped up charges of threatening the security of the region and ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The real reason why they were imprisoned was because they reported on and took part in protests against the regional government. The United Nations issued a report in May 2021 noting that this was just one of many situations where freedom of expression and the press were being curtailed in Kurdistan.

Reporters Without Borders Latest To Comment On Lack of Press Freedom In Iraq

Reporters Without Borders released its annual report on press freedom around the world and found Iraq lacking. The country dropped in standing from 162 to 163 with the higher the number the worse the situation.

Latest Example Of Lack Of Media Freedom In Iraq’s Kurdistan

In January Human Rights Watch and the Metro Center for Journalists’ Rights and Advocacy warned that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) did not respect freedom of the press. They noted that officials routinely use defamation laws which make it illegal to insult them even if the claims are true and that the KRG tried to silence journalists in 2020 by arresting them and trying to stop them from covering stories. The next month the KRG provided its latest example sentencing two reporters and three activists to six years in prison for reporting and participating in protests last year. 

 

Human Rights Watch And Metro Center For Journalists’ Rights Document Limits On Press Freedom In Iraq

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Human Rights Watch recently released its annual global report. It’s section on Iraq had the usual criticisms of the government for not following due process to prosecuting Islamic State members for association alone not any specific crime and relying upon confessions obtained through torture and abuse. It also singled out Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazemi who said he stood with the nation’s protests but did nothing to protect or compensate them since he’s been in office. One interesting tidbit was the limits the central and regional Kurdish governments place upon the press.

Review Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq

Rampton, Sheldon Stauber, John, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq, New York: Jeremy Tarcher/Penguin, 2003

Weapons of Mass Deception by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber is a disjointed book. It purports to be about the use of propaganda by the Bush administration during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However their writing style is akin to a stream of consciousness meaning they go from topic to topic, some of which has more to do with 9/11, the war on terror, and a critique of American politics than Iraq. At its best the book has some interesting sections on how the invasion was covered, but the constant weaving on and off topic distracts from the authors’ argument.