Indeed, if winning the war has been hard on New York Times reporters, one could be forgiven for thinking their battle for the piece of ass has never been easier, that The Times bureau has turned into the sort of freewheeling scene depicted in the artillery-unit documentary Gunner Palace, with a more favorable male-female ratio.
Not so, at least one reporter stationed in Baghdad told Off the Record. The real chips are going to the TV reporters.
“Baghdad was no Saigon,” said a war correspondent who reported from there. “It was no Bangkok. Did journalists hook up with one another? Yes. Was it a land of free lovin’ where there was lots of hookin’ up? No. Just because of logistics and security. There was a lot of it going on within TV networks, where there are lots of expats. Did the Fox crowd sleep around? Yeah. Did the CNN crowd sleep around? Yeah. But in the print world” not much happened, partly because there were so few women around the major newspapers’ compounds.
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