[DEBATE] : US: Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/business/media/23logan.html>
June 23, 2008
Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner
By BRIAN STELTER

Getting a story on the evening news isn't easy for any correspondent.
And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard,
according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News.
So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network.

"Generally what I say is, 'I'm holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,' "
she said last week in an appearance on "The Daily Show," referring to
the initials for rocket-propelled grenade. " 'It's aimed at the bureau
chief, and if you don't put my story on the air, I'm going to pull the
trigger.' "

Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but
her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly
seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts
onto television is harder than ever.

"If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States,
I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts," Ms.
Logan said.

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant
who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has
been "massively scaled back this year." Almost halfway into 2008, the
three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage,
compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The "CBS Evening News"
has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC's
"World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News." (The average
evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq,
where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news
division does not get reports from Iraq on television "with enough
frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad." He
said CBS correspondents can "get in there very quickly when a story
merits it."

In a telephone interview last week, Ms. Logan said the CBS News bureau
in Baghdad was "drastically downsized" in the spring. The network now
keeps a producer in the country, making it less of a bureau and more
of an office.

Interviews with executives and correspondents at television news
networks suggested that while the CBS cutbacks are the most extensive
to date in Baghdad, many journalists shared varying levels of
frustration about placing war stories onto newscasts. "I've never met
a journalist who hasn't been frustrated about getting his or her
stories on the air," said Terry McCarthy, an ABC News correspondent in
Baghdad.

By telephone from Baghdad, Mr. McCarthy said he was not as busy as he
was a year ago. A decline in the relative amount of violence "is
taking the urgency out" of some of the coverage, he said. Still, he
gets on ABC's "World News" and other programs with stories, including
one on Friday about American gains in northern Iraq.

Anita McNaught, a correspondent for the Fox News Channel, agreed. "The
violence itself is not the story anymore," she said. She counted eight
reports she had filed since arriving in Baghdad six weeks ago, noting
that cable news channels like Fox News and CNN have considerably more
time to fill with news than the networks. CNN and Fox each have two
fulltime correspondents in Iraq.

Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, who
splits his time between Iraq and other countries, said he found his
producers "very receptive to stories about Iraq." He and other
journalists noted that the heated presidential primary campaign put
other news stories on the back burner earlier this year.

Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of
Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said
to her, "One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform." In
the follow-up phone interview, Ms. Logan said the producer no longer
worked at CBS. And in both interviews, she emphasized that many
journalists at CBS News are pushing for war coverage, specifically
citing Jeff Fager, the executive producer of "60 Minutes." CBS News
won a Peabody Award last week for a "60 Minutes" report about a Marine
charged in the killings at Haditha.

On "The Daily Show," Ms. Logan echoed the comments of other
journalists when she said that many Americans seem uninterested in the
wars now. Mr. McCarthy said that when he is in the United States,
bringing up Baghdad at a dinner party "is like a conversation killer."

Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has increased slightly this year,
with 46 minutes of total coverage year-to-date compared with 83
minutes for all of 2007. NBC has spent 25 minutes covering
Afghanistan, partly because the anchor Brian Williams visited the
country earlier in the month. Through Wednesday, when an ABC
correspondent was in the middle of a prolonged visit to the country,
ABC had spent 13 minutes covering Afghanistan. CBS has spent eight
minutes covering Afghanistan so far this year.

Both Ms. Logan and Mr. McCarthy noted that more coalition soldiers
were killed in Afghanistan in May than in Iraq. No American television
network has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan, although CNN
recently said it would open a bureau in Kabul.

"It's terrible," Ms. Logan said in the telephone interview. She called
it a financial decision. "We can't afford to maintain operations in
Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time," she said. "It's so expensive
and the security risks are so great that it's prohibitive."

Mr. Friedman said coverage of Iraq is enormously expensive, mostly due
to the security risks. He said meetings with other television networks
about sharing the costs of coverage have faltered for logistical
reasons.

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening
newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would
withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential
election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to
avoid offending their employers.