Baghdad has been hit by another bombing. Thisweek, the UN building was blown up. When it washit, it was filled with hardworking people of decencyand charity. Now many of them are dead.

The attack was not an isolated incident. Last week, the Jordanian Embassy was bombed and 17 people were killed. A few days ago, the water supplies in central Baghdadwere sabotaged, leaving hundreds of thousands with nowater. Last weekend, an oil pipeline in northernIraq was blown up, costing the Iraqi economy millionsof dollars in hard currency. And all during thistime, American troops have been attacked and killed.

This isn’t supposed to be happening. In April, thestory in most North American newspapers and mediaoutlets was clear: Saddam Hussein was dead and his“forces of darkness” were toppled. America hadtriumphed. And barring a few minor squabbles aboutthe nature and timing of Iraqi democracy, it was allover.

The triumphalism of the recent Time magazine “Warcommemorative issue” demonstrates this attitudeclearly. The final page is George W. Bush’s visit toan aircraft carrier on May 1 and his smilingdeclaration that “major hostilities in Iraq areover”.

Now Iraq is in chaos. Its people are stewing in amorass of violence, garbage and broken promises.

All this raises a question: how could so manyjournalists working for so many different newsorganizations have got it so wrong? Setting aside thetruly moronic (of whom there are many, as in otherprofessions) and the intellectually compromised, (anyone who works for the Syrian News Directorate or FOXNews), there are a great many journalists whocompletely misread the situation. Why?

A large part of the criticism has been aimed at “embedded journalists,” correspondents who have been placed with an allied military unit. It is felt by the CBC and others, thatthis produces propaganda of sexy shots of tanks andmissiles or stories of brave U.S. Marines but verylittle about the human cost of the war.

However, for all this discussion there is another formof journalistic “embedding”. It is just as insidious,far more widespread and almost never discussed. And itproduces work that is equally slanted. It is the“embedding” of journalists within their own community.

Arriving in Baghdad is to discover that most of theinternational press corps is holed up in a two-hotelcompound at the centre of the city. The hotels &#0151 thePalestine and the old Sheraton &#0151 are five star,luxurious places with air conditioning and plushlobbies. One night costs about $100.00 (U.S.) or about tentimes the average monthly salary of an Iraqi civilservant. Outside the compound is a ring of barbedwire, pickets of American soldiers and crowds ofimploring Iraqis, desperate to enter.

The problem is that most journalists get up in thisjournalistic prison, talk with their $100.00 a day“fixer”, chat with other journalists and then sallyout of the ring of steel in air conditioned minivansto visit the section of Baghdad that their “fixer”suggests they go to. The Iraqis they meet aremostly sound bite suppliers, rather than real humanbeings.

In the evening the journalists talk to each other.They share thoughts and comments. They dividethemselves into intellectual camps. They reachconsensuses. But they are talking and drinking theirbeers in conditions just about as far from the realIraq as they could possibly be.

The Iraqi “fixers” are, in truth, the realjournalists. They speak the language. They have theconnections. They were frequently “embedded”themselves with the former regime. If they are againstdoing a story…it is very difficult for a foreignerto know or understand how much they are influencingthe story.

“I have worked with the journalists from foreigncountries,” confessed one of the “fixers,” Farook,in a moment of candor. “They are all the same. I takethem to the all the same places. Then we go back tothe hotels. And they always say, ‘Yeah! We got thestory. We’re great! We’re the best.’ And I say, ‘Ohyes, you’re the best!’ And I smile. But I am smilingwith my ass, because really these people could not doanything without me.”

The next problem is that the desk-bound journalists atwhichever country is called home read the mass oforthodox journalism. Then they often pesterjournalists who are not writing what everyone else iswriting into writing the same. The myth is thatforeign journalists are all in competition with eachother. The truth is that most of the time, most of thejournalists are covering exactly the same thing forfear of being perceived as “missing something”.

This is not to say that many international journalistsare not intelligent, hardworking and committed. Butit is to recognize that there is far more compromiseand influence in foreign reporting than we like toadmit. It is the reason why the world got it so wrongon the purported coming of democracy to Haiti,Afghanistan and Kuwait. And it is the reason why oursociety will continue to misunderstand the situationin Iraq and other communities around the world.