Knickmeyer from Iraq: 'Some of Us Here Actually Get Out Quite a Lot'

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003155075

Ellen Knickmeyer, Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post and a veteran of war coverage in Iraq, has written to E&P, responding to our Sept. 16 article, "NYT War Reporter: Anarchy Curtails Reporting in Iraq."

That story, by E&P's David S. Hirschman, covered remarks by another longtime Iraq war reporter, Dexter Filkins, at a forum in New York City. Among other things, Filkins said that 98% of Iraq, and even most of Baghdad, has now become "off-limits" for Western journalists.

Knickmeyer writes in her letter to E&P:

"It is critical in judging the quality of reporting in Iraq to know how much of it the reporter has actually seen for himself or herself; and therefore it critical for us to be explicit how much we as reporters are seeing or not seeing for ourselves.

"I'm writing for that reason, to say that the range of reporting people do for themselves in Iraq varies enormously from person to person and organization to organization, and that some of us here actually get out quite a lot. Unfortunately, the people and organizations who go out the least here in Iraq often seem to speak the loudest, perhaps to justify publicly their decision not to go out.