5. BAGHDAD CONFIDENTIAL
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/10/08/e_fassihi.html
"Can a journalist be too truthful?" That's a question that some
media pundits are asking after Farnaz Fassihi, the Wall Street
Journal's Middle East correspondent, sent a private email to
friends with an unusually candid description of the deteriorating
U.S. control over Iraq and the dangers of doing her job there. A
copy of her email began circulating on the internet. "One could
argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation," she wrote. "For
those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing
could  salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of
terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as
a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a
bottle." Shortly after the email became public, Los Angeles Times
reporter Tim Rutten spoke with two Wall Street Journal reporters,
who told him that the paper has responded by forbidding Fassihi to
write about Iraq for the paper until after the election,
"presumably because unauthorized publication of her private
correspondence somehow called into question the fairness of her
journalism" -- even though other journalists in Iraq privately
share her assessment. Journalism professor Jay Rosen has reviewed
the subsequent pundit fuss and asks the obvious question: "Why
can't reporters on the ground occasionally speak to the 'public'
like this one occasionally spoke to her friends?"
SOURCE: PressThink, October 8, 2004
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