cover image Reporting Iraq: An Oral History of the War by the Journalists Who Covered It

Reporting Iraq: An Oral History of the War by the Journalists Who Covered It

, . . Melville, $21.95 (191pp) ISBN 978-1933633343

With pens down and cameras shuttered, 44 reporters casually and directly discuss all angles of the war in Iraq, including their own shock, fear and incomprehension, in this compilation of interviews conducted by the Columbia Journalism Review . In thematic, loosely chronological chapters (“In the Beginning,” “Turning Points,” “The Embeds,” “The Good News”), the Iraq situation escalates from uncertainty to lawlessness to siege mentality and open insurgency alongside sunny reports from officials: “Iyad Allawi was saying that almost the entire country was safe,” while freelancer Andrew Lee Butters was learning doctors in Mosul's main hospitals “were getting three headless bodies delivered to the morgue every day.” A dramatic portrait of Iraq day-to-day emerges: freelancer Nir Rosen sympathizes with Iraqis' fear of American soldiers; CBS News's Elizabeth Palmer, meanwhile, sees the “ill-prepared” soldiers in essentially the same predicament as the Iraqis: “hostages of a terrible situation.” Back home, reporters deal with misinformation, media bias and posttraumatic stress, as well as disillusionment, shame and rage over the stories that will likely never reach a mass audience. The New Yorker 's Jon Lee Anderson says “there's no proper way” to cover war that isn't “rife with contradictions and problems”; this vital, breathtaking collection may be the closest contemporary reporting gets to cutting through the fog of war. 22 color photos. (Nov.)