Why Doesn't the U.S. Press Quote Iraqi Papers More Often?

By: Erin Olson American newspapers air plenty of opinions about the Iraq war on their editorial pages, but largely absent from the conversation is what their counterparts in Iraq have to say about the current strife. The U.S.-led coalition has professed its dedication to a free Iraqi press, but few of the Iraqi newspapers' criticisms or support for the occupation have made the journey overseas to show Americans another relevant point of view.

The Week magazine, which publishes selections from "the best of the U.S. and international media," is one of the few places to publish occasional excerpts from Iraqi editorials. The Nov. 26 issue quoted editorials on the Fallujah offensive from five newspapers. Baghdad's Al-Nahdad newspaper blamed the destruction of the city on "bandits" loyal to Al-Zargawi, while the capital's Dar al-Salam suggested that with friends like the Americans, Iraqis don't need enemies. And the Al-Mashriq daily, also in Baghdad, noted that the declaring of a 60-day state of emergency across the country proved that "the security situation in Iraq is deteroriating."

According to Eric Effron, managing editor at The Week, there is no easy way to go about finding such opinions, largely because few of the newspapers in Iraq -- which are written in Arabic -- have English-language Web sites. "We hire translators, we subscribe to a BBC monitoring service, we've developed relationships with some of the newspapers," Effron said. "We have a foreign editor, and it's basically her job to find this information."

Effron added that sometimes they get lucky and come across material on LexisNexis, the news database, but finding translated Iraqi editorials there is rare.

Alissa Rubin, Baghdad co-bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, told E&P in an e-mail that the Times has translators who produce highlights from three to five Iraqi newspapers each day. According to Rubin, reporters occasionally quote from translated Iraqi editorials, but as a rule, they are cautious about using material from the press.

"Iraq is a country saturated by rumors, and newspapers often repeat them," Rubin explained. "We try to both reflect what the Iraqi street is saying but not to assert its truthfulness or falseness. So when we write an article about how the Iraqi press/Iraqi street is treating a subject, we might reference a newspaper article and even quote from the article, but we would do so with care."

Susan Chira, foreign editor at The New York Times, said all of her paper's correspondents are attentive to what the Iraqi press is saying and consider it part of the information they need, though they don't have a correspondent specifically dedicated to reporting on the media in Iraq.

"We don't routinely print excerpts, but we try to pay attention to what is going on in the Iraqi press," Chira explained, noting that for high-profile events -- such as the Abu Ghraib trials and the formal transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi government -- the paper did discuss Iraqi press coverage. "We simply try to stay current and use it as another source of information and perspective," she said.