Reuters reporter Claudia Parsons writes that with the threats against American journalists, including Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll who is currently being held hostage, reporters in Iraq are unable to provide a full picture of what's going on in the country.
The dire security situation combined with unwillingness by U.S. publishers and editors to give space to in-depth reports means there are giant gaps in the picture seen by the American public, said Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley."I don't think there's ever been such a difficult situation, with the possible exception of Moscow or Beijing during the height of the Cold War," Schell said. He added that U.S. TV news media in particular were doing an "abysmal job"....
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said there was a danger of being blinded to the bigger picture by daily violence. "Do you not cover today's car bombing because you want to do a longer piece about the return of the agricultural economy?" he said.
