The Columbia Journalism Review has kindly run an essay of mine, kind of summarizing the last six months of tracking the roads meme.
This strange, fleeting idea that roads create security was a flash in the pan, one assisted by the hordes of adventure journalists who parachute into a war zone and think they’re getting a story by just quoting officials and public affairs officers. That isn’t to slander embeds…Nor is it to defame the military. They have every right to push their side of events, but, as I have argued, they actually need to do a better job of it. The problem, as with the differing accounts of the fighting at Azizabad, is that they are so ham-fisted in their dissemination efforts. For far too many short-term reporters, unversed in the issues and subtleties of local events, skepticism is simply a lost art. Unable to question the sometimes questionable claims of officials, they too often serve as empty mouthpieces, repeating press releases as if they were actual news.
As always, read the whole thing. And as always, comments are welcome.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust