An article by Katharine Q. Seelye in the New York Times reports that over the past year, many journalists have been receiving an anonymous email message citing positive facts of the Iraq war not reported on by the media. The note provoked a discussion at a meeting of editors of papers who are members of the Associated Press, the association that most American papers turn to for their Iraq news. They agreed that their public doesn't feel that they're getting the whole story which has been lacking in more in-depth accounts of what's happening, but that at the same time it is very difficult to report in Iraq due to the obvious dangers of war. To cure these ill public perceptions, managing editor of the AP, Mike Silverman said that the AP planned on including a summary of the situation by one of their correspondents every ten days and that it would try to include more reporting from journalists entrenched with soldiers. This last effort, however, will pose a problem seeing as the number of reporters living with soldiers has been reduced from 700 two years ago to about 50 today. Another general perception is that news on Iraq is too negative. In the view of some, the media has been avoiding stories of accomplishment that the public is hearing from returned military personnel. But one editor that attended the AP meeting felt that this was normal even on a local level where "we're more likely to focus on people who are killed than on the positive news out of school."

Source: New York Times