Jeff Jarvis echoes Howard Kurtz’s observation that most U.S. reporters in Iraq aren’t daring to venture outside the Green Zone. Given the chaos there and the danger of being taken hostage or worse, it’s hard to second-guess the decisions these journalists are making. But there’s no question we won’t get the full picture from Iraq this way.
Jarvis suggests we read Iraqi bloggers (and provides a set of links to them). That’s certainly good advice.
But it’s also worth pointing out that Salon’s coverage from Iraq was not “embedded” during the invasion and is not embedded in the Green Zone today. Our correspondent Phillip Robertson has been courageously, and independently, traveling the country, offering eyewitness accounts from the siege of Najaf and Kufa, escaping a thankfully brief detainment by Moqtada al-Sadr’s Al-Mehdi Army, and providing another angle on the Abu Ghraib abuses.
Phillip is a fine writer and a great observer. If you want to read reporting that’s not hunkered down behind the barricades, here it is.
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