Riehl World View takes the MSM to task for calling the guerilla fighters in Iraq “insurgents” rather than “terrorists.” Other bloggers have the same gripe here, here, and here.
I explained a little bit here why I generally use the term “insurgent” in my articles, but I thought I’d defend my usage a bit more thoroughly.
- People have different definitions of terrorism (here vs. here, for example), but it’s generally taken to only include attacks against civilians. But I have no problem calling the insurgents “terrorists” when they cut the heads off civilians etc. However, the insurgency is apparently made up of about three dozen different gangs, including some that shy away from tactics like car bombings. Muqtada al-Sadr’s Al-Mahdi Army has fought with U.S. troops, but I don’t believe it has ever targeted civilians. (Al-Sadr also apparently intervened to help free a hostage British journalist).
- From the State Department: “Most of the attacks that have occurred during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom do not meet the longstanding US defi nition of international terrorism because they were directed at combatants, that is, US and Coalition forces on duty. Attacks against noncombatants, that is, civilians and military personnel who at the time of the incident were unarmed and/or not on duty, are judged as terrorist attacks.”
- The Pentagon uses the term “insurgents”. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld uses the term “insurgents” in prepared testimony before Congress. (Are they America-haters trying to undermine the war effort, too…?) I don’t think the mainstream media should mindlessly parrot what officials say, but surely their views count for something…
- “Insurgents” strikes me as a neutral term — probably why some people hate it. But “we report, you decide” is a pretty good slogan, regardless of whether you think Fox practices it.
- “Rebels,” “insurrectionists” and “minutemen” strike me as way too romantic. Guerillas and militants are fine, but there’s no parallel term of “guerillancy.”
Bizarrely, Riehl World View also claims that “a true insurgency, such as the one in the Ukraine, or the emerging one in Lebanon, can be carried out through non-violent means. It can bring forth positive change.”
Again, what I dislike about the blogosphere — people just think they can make stuff up. Fausta, I defy you to find me where an insurgency has been used to describe anything other than an “armed struggle.” Was Gandhi an insurgent? Martin Luther King Jr. Please. And the only google hits for “Ukrainian insurgency” I found have to do with fighting during and immediately after World War II.
Likewise, novelist and blogger Roger L. Simon claims that “‘insurgents,’ in most historical uses, has referred to groups trying to upset an illegitimate or semi-legitimate regime.” No examples or evidence to back this up, though. A simple search on Nexis for the first six months of 1990 in the NY Times found hundreds of examples of the term “insurgency” being used to describe everything from the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua to a communist insurgency in the Phillipines to a guerilla war in Guatemala to fighting in Liberia to leftist drug-dealing guerillas in Peru.
Derek,
Okay, I just put up my new blog.
Gutenblog Castle.
I included a file on one of our exchanges on your comments pages. It was a good discussion, I think.
Your comments on the use of “insurgents” and “terrorists” are just what I hope to focus on as I proceed with Gutenblog Castle.
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“People have different definitions of terrorism (here vs. here, for example), but it’s generally taken to only include attacks against civilians.”
The attack on the USS Cole, the Pentagon during 9/11 and the Beirut bombings of the Marine barracks all come to mind quickly as examples of “terrorist attacks” on military topics. I’m sure there are more…
Derek,
Hope you don’t mind if I have a few basic questions. I read your short piece on Fossett in Tuesday’s DN. I noticed that at the bottom of the article it says, “With News Wire Services.” If there is a direct quotation in your story, does that mean that YOU talked to the person or is it possibly a clip from a news-wire service?
For example, you wrote:
“He just made a beautiful, beautiful ascent, just flying into the horizon,” said spokeswoman Lori Levin.
Did you talk to Lori Levin yourself or are did you clip that from another reporter who talked to Ms. Levin?
I know it might seem like a small matter, but I’ve learned over the years that following the details always has a payoff sooner or later.
Thanks in advance.
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Hey, now that the Pentagon admits it took some pot-shots at that Italian journalist in Iraq, does this mean Eason Jordan gets his job back?
-mofo
Hey, now that the Pentagon admits it took some pot-shots at that Italian journalist in Iraq, does this mean Eason Jordan gets his job back?
-mofo
Jeffrey,
Yeah, I talked to Lori Levin myself, over the phone. But technically, if you see “with news wire reports” that could have meant I took it from Reuters or the AP. If it’s an important quote or a scoop, I’ll try to give the news agency credit: “told the Associated Press.”
When I worked for the Union Leader up in New Hampshire, we had different methods to use how much wire copy we were using in the story. The byline might say, “By staff and wire reports” or “By Derek Rose / Union Leader Staff / and wire reports” if I used a lot of wire copy. But if I used just a little bit, the wire service would get a tagline (i.e., credit at the bottom of the story). At the DN, it’s all taglines.
Anonymous No. 2 – good comments. Generally, I think most people would classify those attacks as acts of terrorism.
Still — playing a bit of the devil’s advocate here — don’t we bomb our enemies’ soldiers’ barracks as well? Weren’t Afghanistan and Iraq’s ministries of defense one of our first targets (albeit not with passenger airplanes). Haven’t we bombed enemy warships before?
I’m not trying to draw any kind of equivalence between America and her enemies, simply looking at the morality of tactics. When insurgents use car bombs or bomb-laden speedboats (in the case of the Cole) against our troops, I think most of us would be inclined to say, “yeah, that’s terrorism.”
But how is a car bomb or a bomb-boat that much different (as a tactic) from dropping a 1,000-pound bomb from five miles high?
Derek,
A couple more questions, if you don’t mind.
When you talk about “using wire copy,” do you mean reading for background information or actually cutting and pasting entire paragraphs?
I understand your comments about citing Reuters or AP if the quotation is significant, but does that mean that most other quotes — the ones that don’t come from your own interviews — are clipped directly from wire copy?
If so, from a teacher’s point of view, this is strange. It sounds like a very loose kind of plagiarism to me. A journalist can cut from wire copy — someone else’s writing — and include the passage or passages in one’s own bylined article, as long as at the bottom you add “with wire news reports” or something like that. We, the readers, don’t know what YOU wrote and what comes from AP and Reuters. Is this how it works, or is this a misrepresentation of current practices?
Oh yeah, thanks so much for steering me to Romensko’s Letters at Poynter. It’s been great reading professional journalists like yourself talk shop. I’ve learned a lot.
Chip Scanlan wrote an article on notetaking versus tape-recording for interviews.
And then the journalists talked shop on the comments page. A great range of responses.
So, how about you, do you prefer taking notes or recording? Or both? Or one or the other depending on the assignment?
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Jeffrey,
I believe that under current practice, there can be “cutting and pasting” of entire paragraphs if there’s attribution at the bottom. I never do that, except for quotes, which obviously you don’t want to change.
Most of my quotes I get myself. And for awhile after the Jayson Blair scandal, I tried to follow the Baltimore Sun’s lead and attribute every single quote I didn’t hear myself – “told the AP” – “told Reuters” – etc. But, err, there may have been some backsliding since then. It can be a bit unwieldy, and honestly, I figured the vast majority of my readers didn’t care. (As noted, I do attribute important quotes- or ones I deem important – and other times the wire service gets credit at bottom).
But basically, your understanding is correct — and I agree, it’s not the most transparent of practices. On the other hand, on any dual-bylined story, you won’t know which reporter got the quote. Wire service reporters aren’t our employees, obviously, but we’re still paying for their services.
And realistically: readers never really know what I wrote, even if my name is the only one on the story. All my stuff goes through two layers of editing… I’d like to think that I always submit clean lean copy — but there are times when editors slap a new lede (first sentence) on my story, or rewrite several important paragraphs. I’m generally consulted, but my point is, this is a collaborative business.
Tape recorders are pretty essential for speeches and press conferences, IMHO, unless you’re only going to quote a sentence or two. But if I’m talking to someone one-on-one (i.e., interviewing them), I rarely bother with a tape recorder. They can make people nervous, malfunction or pick up too much background noise. Plus, it always takes longer to go through a tape than written notes. Taking notes — if someone’s talking too fast for me, I can always ask them to slow down or repeat themself.
Derek,
Thanks so much. Your comments are really helping me understand how that 170,000 “mutant statistic” flew around the world within 24 hours.
I’m starting to notice that a lot of journalists were simply cutting quotes from the original articles written by those who went to the museum.
For example, here’s an article written the next day from two British reporters in Qatar (not Baghdad). They use the SAME quotes of Nabhal Amin that come from the original articles by Hamza Hendawi for the AP and Hassan Hafidh for Reuters. They’re cutting and pasting from the AP/Reuters wire services as paying customers, I imagine. (BTW, the two reporters did NOT even mention wire service use in writing the article.)
You can see the problem, right? Hendawi and Hafidh reported erroneous information and it was cut and pasted by hundreds of other new agencies. And NO ONE went back to do a follow-up with Nabhal Amin.
Derek, c’mon, this is absolutely no good. Of course, I understand the collaborative nature of journalism, with editors always having the final say with what is written under your byline. But I have a problem with the ease with which journalists are cutting and pasting. It leads to exaggerated pictures we found with the Iraq National Museum.
Okay, I’m just grousing here. You’re a good friend to have within journalism, so don’t take this so personally.
If you like, you might want to check out my research over at my new blog, Gutenblog Castle.
I’m still getting my feet with the new blog, but it’s been fun. I’m including some pieces that aren’t so serious too, like Babar.
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Derek,
Oh heck, I just couldn’t resist this. It seems one of your colleagues has come out with a tell-all blog entry.
Heh heh.
Whoa!
Watch what you’re throwing! That could hurt someone!
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Jeffrey,
Yeah, I don’t know what happened with that. In general, journalism relies a lot on reptition — journalists re-reporting what others have already said. Editors frequently ask us to “match” a competitor’s story – i.e., come up with the same story through independent reporting. It can sometimes get tedious for the sources, as Bruce Bartlett noted last year in a letter to Romenesko:
As I told him– this process is probably very repetitious for sources, but at least it helps prevent mis-quotations from spreading around the country.
Why didn’t this process work in this case? I would guess that has something to do with the difficulties from reporting from a war zone — and yes, that’s not a very good excuse.
(Re-reading Bartlett’s entire letter nine months later is rather interesting, btw … in his final paragraph, he made a rather prescient point about blogs and media credibility).
It seems really inappropriate to explain the inner workings of your job, your reporting, the editing, and decision making on a website that could, theoretically, be read around the world and used to criticize what your paper does….
I’m sure your bosses would be none-too-pleased …. and I’m sure they will see it.
This “Jeffrey” seems to be asking too many questions ….
I hope that’s not the case! Really, I would hope that it pays to be open and up-front about how we conduct our business.
I’ve tried to make this not too much about my current job and more about my experiences in the business in general. It’s not like I’ve used this as a platform to criticize co-workers or talked about the times where I’ve disagreed with my editors. (Who doesn’t disagree with their bosses at times, right?)
Derek,
Thanks for all the inside skinny. Listen, there are many great journalists out there and from what I’ve read from your articles you’re a responsible, professional journalist. I know why you admire journalists like John F. Burns. He writes very well and has the ability to suggest larger context even on specific stories. I admire that too.
But what I’m investigating now is journalism as a system. What you and I are discussing, I think, are systemic issues, right? And I agree with you that these aspects of journalism should be scrutinized just like anything else. I’m not even suggesting right now that we need to fix anything. I’m very simply trying to find out what actually happens on a day-to-day basis in journalism. I have been using the Iraq National Museum story simply as a way to focus my research and analysis, which I’m still working on. Over at Gutenblog Castle, I’ve only put up some background and summary pieces. The analysis and interpretation is yet to come.
I will need your help, so I really hope you don’t mind if I continue to ask questions when I’m stuck.
Thanks in advance.
I have to teach now, but when I get home I’ll check on that Bartlett piece.
Later,
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[…] I haven’t been opining so much about journalism-related topics lately, although I did more in the past. For example, here I tried to explain why I’ve used the term “insurgents” rather than “terrorists” to describe what was going on in Iraq. Here and here I defended the mainstream media from charges we were misreporting what was going on in Iraq and ignoring the “good news.” (Uh, yeah). […]