WHAT WE DON'T KNOW . . . WELL, WHO KNOWS

Ed Cone mentioned in the comments section that he had a column up on the media coverage on Iraq, and I was intrigued.

Ed and I disagree about an awful lot of things, but we agree on this much: the media isn't doing its job, if we define its job as keeping us informed about the overall situation in Iraq.

I thought his comparison of the way the news division will assume we can only follow a single thread while the entertainment division knows that the best narrative television is that which asks us to follow multiple and complex threads simultaneously was particularly apt.

He and I disagree, of course, in how much faith we place in what the press actually knows. I mean, many of them will admit that they spend most of their time in Baghdad or travelling in packs -- and that's the reporters actually in the country. So you can imagine how much faith I place in anything Sy Hersh has to say.

I keep pushing the good news stories that I come across, such as the Chrenkoff series that Ed mentions in his piece, not because I'm under any illusions that the place is Shangra-la. But from consistent reports from soldiers in the field I do believe both that the good news is being way underreported and that the journalists who are there don't understand the military enough to pick up any nuance in what they're seeing. If they even care.

In an ideal world, I would push the press to provide coverage that wasn't good or bad but less narrow. That was, you'll remember, Jay Rosen's take on all this, and it's still the best I've seen. But I've about decided it's also too damn optimistic.

Update: A superior link for the column.