[lit-ideas] Re: News via the web
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 02:29:43 EST
Here's an excerpt:
online at http://www.cjr.org/issues/2004/2/beckerman-iraq.asp
From Columbia Journalism Review (March/April 2004)
In Their Skin
Few aspects of reporting in postwar Iraq are more important than the job of=20
entering Iraqi minds to see what they think and feel about the American=20
occupation. Four journalists discuss the challenge
BY GAL BECKERMAN
But Packer found that Iraqis do love to talk. Their garrulousness surprised=20
him, although he thought that this, too, could have a certain pathological=20
quality. =E2=80=9CThere were many interviews where I would be sitting with s=
ome guy in his=20
living room, after the three-hour lunch we would always have, and I would=20
just start getting angry at my translator because what he was telling me jus=
t didn
=E2=80=99t make sense,=E2=80=9D Packer says. =E2=80=9CThe conversation just=20=
kept on leaping around=20
without any rational back and forth. And he would say to me, =E2=80=98George=
, I=E2=80=99m=20
giving you a word-for-word translation.=E2=80=99=E2=80=9D=20
Many of the Iraqis he talked to had a hard time developing clear arguments,=20
explaining themselves fully, and, as Packer put it, =E2=80=9Cunderstanding t=
heir own=20
situation.=E2=80=9D Packer thinks this might be related to the fact that the=
Iraqis were=20
isolated and denied free will for so long. A psychiatrist whom Packer quoted=
=20
in the article explained that Iraqis lack =E2=80=9Cthe power to experience f=
reedom.=E2=80=9D=20
Empathy, Packer believes, can help reporters bridge this divide. Journalists=
=20
need to =E2=80=9Cmake the little imaginative effort to get into the skin of=20=
Iraqis,=E2=80=9D=20
Packer says. =E2=80=9CThen they won=E2=80=99t need hours and hours, and they=
will be a little=20
bit immune to the tidy sound bite they often end up with.=E2=80=9D=20
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