There's no pleasing some people. After the first Gulf War, (in which Norwegian TV coverage basically consisted of CNN clips of Pentagon briefings, combined with CNN clips of white blurry dots on a green background they called Baghdad), the Norwegian media criticized itself for having relied too much on American sources. It had allowed itself to be made an uncritical part of the American propaganda machine, presenting the war as they wanted it to be seen: a clean, clinical operation.

So this time, the Norwegian media made sure to place reporters of its own in Baghdad, and enroll a few with the coalition forces. Both TV2 and the tabloid newspaper VG have embedded reporters in the US army, giving them precisely the unique, original, uncensored perspective that was unavailable to them in 91.

Naturally, not all the coverage (in fact none) so far reveals Americans to be twitchy, brutal war criminals, slaughtering civilians right and left - as in all those Vietnam movies the current generation of reporters grew up with. Some of the coverage has been downright positive. VG on Sunday placed Iraqis waving American flags on its front page, and its two embedded journalists reported how the soldiers they were with were received as heroes in one particular area.

This may possibly be the first tabloid front page in Norway that has been clearly positive to the second Gulf War - ever. Naturally, then, this one front page has been seized upon as evidence that yet again, the Norwegian media has become part of the American propaganda machine. Once more, we're showing a war exactly the way the Americans want it to be shown. One single front page, and suddenly there's a vast pro-American media conspiracy going on.

The left-oriented tabloid Dagbladet, (a really good, wrong newspaper), accused VG the next day of being an American tool, and also its editorials of flirting with Carl I. Hagen's strong support of the US and Great Britain. (As I don't usually read VG, this was news to me, or I would have reported it before.)

The usual gang from Dial-A-Worried-Expert followed up by being deeply worried in a most serious fashion in various debate programs on TV and radio. Not particularly regretful ex-communist and professor of Very Serious Journalism, Sigurd Allern, was deeply worried about VG's choice of front page and the use of embedded journalists, fearing that these reporters would begin to identify with American soldiers. Equally worried was Henrik Thune, from the ridiculously over-quoted NUPI (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs). Explaining what was wrong with VG's front page:

We see a picture of the civilian population in southern Iraq welcoming American soldiers with American flags. It's unclear whether these people were put there by the Americans or not, and the fact is that the number of Iraqi defectors has been much lower than what one had expected.

Since when were tabloid front pages expected to reveal the whole truth, and nothing less? As a VG editor said in his defense on TV2's Tabloid yesterday, the welcome the Americans received in this area were not the whole truth, (as they have not been welcomed in a lot of other places), but it was one part of the truth. And as I would have added: It is a part of the truth that has been vastly underrepresented in the other media, which justifies the decision to highlight it.

As for VG being a yankee stooge, the reports from its embedded reporters, Kim Riseth and Harald Henden, is nothing more or less than good war journalism. On Friday they vividly described the ease with which American forces were razing through southern Iraq, passing beduines and ruins from Gulf War I, meeting civilians whose command of English is just good enough to say "America good! Saddam evil" or "Bush evil! Saddam good!". Today, they reported from the first burial in their battalion, a 19 year old killed in a traffic accident, and they talked to a 22 year old soldier who was afraid to die.

Is this bad reporting? Only if showing American soldiers in a sympathetic, humane light is bad. Clearly it is.

And thank goodness for the Norwegian and other non-American embedded reporters. Were it not for them, doubtless our savage and bloodthirsty troops would be competing to see how many Iraqi women and children each unit could senselessly kill.

Clearly, any picture implying that ordinary Iraqis might prefer the presence of American forces to their own, homegrown Ba'athist soldiers and operatives must be staged. Why on earth would Iraqis prefer Americans handing out food to being tortured by the Iraqi regime.

Heh, heh. The American conspiracy to take over the world is well on its way to success....abetted, if not in fact controlled, by the wily and nefarious...well, you know whose behind all the troubles in the world.

...and the fact is that the number of Iraqi defectors has been much lower than what one had expected.

Only because the populous is still intimaded by Saddam's thugs who Rumsfeld is calling 'deadenders'... Give it time (at least another day or two anyway), deeply worried experts...

MESSAGE TO SPAMMERS: I know you're here because you think this is an easy blog to spam. Possibly you came here through Google, or from some list of spammable blogs. In either case, your source is wrong. I have deleted houndreds of spam comments over the last couple of months, about 50 on this entry alone. I _will delete yours_. So save us both the time and get lost.

Trackback URL: /cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/117