Real News From Iraq
The mainstream media are reasonably good at reporting the extremes of the news. This means the coverage of news from, say, Iraq tends to be at the extreme edges — either extremely good, or extremely bad. Of the two, they tend to favour the extremely bad.
On the whole this is a good thing as these tend to be the most important things for us to know. Unfortunately, it can also give a skewed sense of reality. This is especially true when we have little to no personal experience.
This ‘little to no’ perspective is what I bring to each story I read about Iraq. My understanding of Iraq is almost entirely made up of various media accounts. My friends-in-service have balanced the account up slightly, but generally I know it is pretty skewed.
But reading an article on the blog ‘Iraq the Model’ has completely altered my view of life in Iraq. While my mental-model of life there is hardly the same as an Iraqi’s, it certainly feels much more real than it ever has before. It still seems bizarre and different from life on my street, but mostly it feels bizarre because it juxtaposes military action with ordinary real life.
This kind of news (the everyday) doesn’t really get reported in the main stream media. Amateur journalism seems to be balancing that out.
Iraq The Model: Midnight Company
July 17th, 2007 at 4:39 UTC
Sadly , The “Extreamly Bad” Usually has 15 seconds of “85 iraqis dead” and 15 minutes about “8 solders dead” (About how one of those solders was a good person..bla..bla..bla..). Stupid corruption.