Finding the good news in Iraq

From The Star-Telegram

Staff writer David House commenting on the publics demand for good news reporting from Iraq as well as the bad.

"We place a premium on good-news stories," Gravois [Assistant Managing Editor] said, "but we can't get many" mainly because of secretive contractors who are rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure and the heightened dangers in the Sunni Triangle. "Journalists are major targets of kidnappers and terrorists," he said.

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Readers are in no mood to hear excuses. They want a bigger window on Iraq. They expect that from the world's best-equipped, best-financed, freedom-blessed, lightning-fast news media, and they are right to hold us to high expectations.

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Perhaps it would help if they could hear what I've been hearing from the public. Some readers are literally screaming for a dose of good news -- not fluff, but a look at verifiable gains worth noting and how Iraqi life is faring outside of the Sunni Triangle as well as inside. Without such details, readers are short-circuited in personally holding the U.S. government accountable.

During the past three weeks, I've encountered an explosive intensity in readers' demands for good news. Never in nearly 40 years in this business have I faced such reader fury because of a perceived cataclysmic disconnect between the news media and the public.

I think the government is doing a terrible job of getting the good news out. It's as if the government have decided to let the media handle "getting the word out". Unfortunately all the media want to report is the bad news.
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