Baghdad Confidential

"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 anything 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." Fassihi will not be reporting further on Iraq until after the U.S. presidential election, prompting speculation that "publication of her private correspondence somehow called into question the fairness of her journalism." But 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?"