Expense, safety complicating newsgathering in Iraq, NPR's Flintoff says

By Jessica Prado

April 18, 2008 | LOGAN -- Safety and cost issues have made it challenging for reporters to provide a "genuinely direct picture" of the Iraq war, said National Public Radio reporter Corey Flintoff.

He spoke at a Media & Society Lecture to a large crowd of journalism and communication students Wednesday afternoon in the Performance Hall at Utah State University.

Flintoff, who spent 17 years as the afternoon voice of NPR's newscasts and is currently a foreign correspondent for NPR based in Washington, said that while he did observe a positive and "meaningful change in security" while working in Baghdad from Aug. 2006 to Feb. 2007, reporters still put themselves "at personal risk."

According to Flintoff there are "numbers of factions in this war [who] would like nothing better than to get their hands on a western journalist, either to make an example of them or to hold them for ransom" for both criminal and political reasons.

Flintoff said that most of the street interviews in Baghdad must be done by Iraqi reporters "who are able to move around in the society, speak the language, look like other Iraqis…and the danger is considerable for them as well" simply because they work for a western news organization.

After describing some of the most recent incidents of murder and kidnapping among NPR reporters, including an Iraqi native, Flintoff said that the only way a western reporter can safely travel around Iraq is if they are "embedded in a U.S. military unit."

According to Flintoff reporting from inside a military patrol makes "the real job" of assessing without bias how well the U.S. military effort is doing in Iraq extremely difficult for a variety of reasons.

Why the difficulty?

Flintoff said one of the reasons is that the military has "been very cooperative" with reporters by taking them around Iraq and offering them protection, so "they're likeable people."

"I actually had military public affairs officers competing to get me out to their specific units…it's a bit like used car sales," Flintoff said.

Also according to Flintoff, a tendency to "take on a lot of the perceptions of the American military" is another reason critical reporting in Iraq is difficult.

"When you're riding along in a humvee and you're looking out your little window of bulletproof glass everyone on the other side tends to look like an enemy," Flintoff said.

To avoid bias in his reporting, Flintoff said that he tries to be honest with himself and his listeners about "just how limited a view" he is able to provide when doing a story in Iraq.

In addition to the safety issue, cost is a heavily contributing factor to the challenges reporters face in Iraq, said Flintoff.

"Obviously doing this job properly requires going to a lot of locations around Iraq and no western news organization really has the facilities to do that anymore," Flintoff said, "It's become too expensive to keep people there."

Flintoff said that just after the war started when "the data came out in 2003" there were estimated 1,500-2,000 reporters from all over the world covering the invasion in Iraq.

That number has since declined to what Flintoff estimated were now around 70 reporters from all nations doing the same type of coverage in Iraq.

Flintoff said that it currently costs NPR "an excess of $1million a year to maintain a bureau" in Baghdad.

With safety being a considerable issue, western news organizations are willing to fork-out the big bucks just to get their employees to and from the airport—a $2,800 trip one way—according to Flintoff.

What kind of airport shuttle service costs $2,800?

The kind that includes "a couple of former British Royal marines with their guns and their ammunition and their expertise and a couple of drivers who've been trained in evasive driving techniques," Flintoff said.

In addition to armored shuttle service, NPR also leases a house in a neighborhood full of other news organizations, like FOX, that is surrounded by paid guards.

Add to that the price associated with satellite transmissions to get stories back to the U.S. coupled with maintaining Iraqi interpreters and reporters—who Flintoff believes aren't getting paid enough for risking their lives and their families' lives "to make it possible for us to function in a conflict zone."

"But those are part of the costs of living in a place like this," Flintoff said.

After the lecture Flintoff told the Utah Statesman that he has visited many college campuses around the country and commented that USU students are "obviously well informed."

"I really and truly have not gotten better questions," Flintoff said.

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