The world''s best known reporters tell the story of what really
happened in Iraq in a gripping and gritty narrative history of the
war.
Included are contributions from fifty international journalists,
including Dexter Filkins, The New York Times correspondent who won
widespread praise for his coverage of Fallujah; Rajiv
Chandrassekaran, author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City;
Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post, who won the Pulitzer Prize
for his war coverage; Richard Engel of NBC; Anne Garrels of NPR,
and other star reporters from both the print and broadcast world,
not to mention their translators, photo journalists, and a military
reporter.
All come together to discuss the war from its beginning on, and
they hold back nothing on the violence they faced—Farnaz Fassihi of
the Wall Street Journal talks about her near–kidnapping by "five
men with AK–47s" chasing her car. "I kept thinking, ''This is
it.''" Nor do they hold back discussing how this impacted their
work—British reporter Patrick Cockburn of The Independent notes
that "One had to spend an enormous amount of time thinking about
one''s own security," and NPR reporter Deborah Amos observes that it
was even more complicated for women: "As time went on we had to
dress as Iraqi women, in the most conservative costumes Iraqi women
would wear."
But perhaps the most fascinating—and chilling—observation is that
most saw a disaster in Iraq unfolding long before they were allowed
to report it. As Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker puts it,
various governmental authorities and the media''s own fears combined
"to keep bad news away from the public," an observation supported
by over 21 stunning, full–color photographs—many of which have
never been published before due to such censorship.
Collected by the editors of America''s most prestigious media
monitor, the Columbia Journalism Review, such revelations make
Reporting Iraq a fascinating and unique look at the war, as well as
an important critique of international press coverage.