Sunday, September 14, 2014

Naked in Baghdad: the Iraq War as Seen by NPR's correspondent

Anne Garrels

Basically a behind the scene memoir by Garrels of her time in and out of Iraq leading up to and during the 2003 war in Iraq. It is an interesting revelation about how reporters and foreign governments interact, how much graft and corruption there was in Iraq, how competitive and scoop oriented the media is (more scoop oriented than story or people oriented), and how beholden we are to this media for information. Garrels made efforts to find Iraqis and interview them, to really find the people of the country and not just report the government information. But this story is really about what it is like to be a journalist, not about the Iraq War. It is a decent companion to Baghdad Diaries, which is the Iraqi point of view on that war. But neither is really complete, as probably no single book can be.
Read