Opinion: The other day, as its latest contribution to the death spiral of American journalism, Associated Press announced it would now be supplying newspapers across the country with alternate versions of important stories to, as they put it, "enhance the value of the AP news report to your newspaper".
"The concept is simple," AP explained in a memo to editors. "On major spot stories, especially when events happen early in the day, we will provide you with two versions to choose between. One will be the traditional 'straight lead' that leads with the main facts of what took place. The other will be the 'optional', an alternative approach that attempts to draw in the reader through imagery, narrative devices, perspective or other creative means."
Imagery, narrative devices. Who can argue with that? Big important second-term creative-writing course stuff. Can't get enough of it myself. If I'd been more on the ball, I'd have opened this column with a bit of gripping specific imagery myself.
Anyway, AP offered a sample of the alternative versions. Traditional: "Mosul, Iraq (AP) - A suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shia mourners on Thursday, splattering blood and body parts over rows of overturned white plastic chairs. The attack, which killed 47 and wounded more than 100, came as Shia and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad said they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government.
Optional: "Mosul, Iraq (AP) - Yet again, almost as if scripted, a day of hope for a new, democratic Iraq turned into a day of tears as a bloody insurgent attack undercut a political step forward.
"On Thursday, just as Shia and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad were telling reporters that they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government, a suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent." Etc.
Wow. "Day of hope" turning into "day of tears". I haven't seen that kind of sparkling prose since Barbra Streisand stood up at that pre-Iraq War Democratic Party gala in Hollywood and solemnly regaled the assembled bigshots with Shakespeare's amazingly pertinent lines from Julius Caesar: "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervour, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate . . ." That's in Julius Caesar? Sure, it's just before the bit where Mark Antony says: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, countrymen who need countrymen are the luckiest countrymen in the world." When it was pointed out that her Shakespeare speech was an obvious Internet hoax, Barbra said who cares? "Whoever wrote this is damn talented, and should be writing their own play." Maybe. But, what with those drums of war whipped into the fever pitch of a double-edged sword all in a paragraph, I'd say the guy should be manning the Fresh Vivid Imagery desk at AP.
Yet in the midst of that unreadable sludge of cliches the AP's desert bard came up with one unreadable sludgy cliche that gets the gist of their Iraq coverage better than anything: "Yet again, almost as if scripted." Isn't that precisely the problem? It is pre-scripted. The good folk of Basra and Kirkuk don't spring out of bed each morning saying, "Ah, another day of hope", only to trudge off to dreamland 16 hours later wondering why yet again the day of hope turned into a day of tears, daring to sing yet another chorus of The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow but knowing deep down chances are the Sunni'll come out tomorrow and blow up the schoolhouse.
As we learned on election day in January, that doomy drivel is imposed on the Iraqi people by the media's pre-scripters. War coverage that comes "almost as if scripted" wouldn't be so bad if they had any scripts in the cupboard except the old instant Vietnam remake formula. But once the fellows holed up in the Green Zone hotels decided that the war was ye olde Vietnam quagmire, everyone else got the hang of the formula pretty quickly.
The "insurgents" got the hang too of staging their photo-ops on Eastern Standard Time, setting some second-hand Nissan alight each morning Baghdad time so that its plume of smoke could be conveniently filmed from the press hotel balcony in time for the Today Show and Good Morning America. Days of hopes turned into days of tears as regular as clockwork. And, as the army learned a day or two ago, when a group of captured "insurgents" turned out to include a CBS cameraman, the notion that the enemy and the media are on the same side isn't always just a rhetorical flourish.
And in between their Bridges-Of-Madison-County ima-gery and Horse-Whisperer narrative devices the western media somehow managed to lose the story: functioning municipal government in the south; booming tourism in the north; normality and progress in three-quarters of the country; and now the first Arab country with a non-Arab head of state. The insurgent-of-the-day approach to Iraq didn't even capture that element correctly. On the second anniversary of the invasion, Agence France-Presse ran a story remarkably like the AP's hypothetical specimen. The headline: "45 Killed In Insurgent Attacks".
The lead paragraph: "At least 45 people have been killed in insurgent attacks across Iraq as Washington defended its decision to go to war on the second anniversary of the US-led invasion." It took an Australian blogger, Arthur Chrenkoff, to poke deep into the story and emerge with the most salient fact, that of the 45 dead, 29 were "insurgents". Terrorism is supposed to be one guy indiscriminately killing large numbers of the other side. No terrorist network can survive long if it's losing two of its own men for every one of the enemy. That's the story: a day of hope turned into yet another day of tears - for the insurgents.
With a few honourable exceptions, Iraq coverage has been a truly spectacular failure. One day in the future, we'll dig out the yellowing cuttings and wonder how America managed to lose every daily battle and yet win the war.