War / Peace

Round-the-clock coverage of the war in Iraq has eclipsed a host of bad-news stories from the rest of the world, including a massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Israeli killings and detentions in the West Bank, and a crackdown on dissidents in Cuba. According to Curt Goering of Amnesty International USA, the virtual exclusion of most other international news has provide an opportunity for repressive authorities to settle old scores. "That's been a fear that we had even before the war started," Goering said.

"The front line in the war for hearts and minds in the Arab world and
beyond is here, at the U.S. Central Command headquarters and media
center," writes the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof from Doha, Qatar. Kristof gives the Bush administration credit for reaching out to the foreign press, noting that Al Jazeera was assigned a front row seat for press briefings while the Times was in the second row. But he suggests international journalists see through the spin.

"If you want your core values to mean anything, you have to live them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And you cannot simply abandon them in times of crisis," PR Week columnist (and weblogger) Paul Holmes writes in his Holmes Report.

"If till now the coalition forces have been the ones surprised by the apathy of the Iraqi population and the cool welcome given them, apparently it is now Saddam Hussein's turn to be surprised," writes Zvi Bar'el. "The initial pictures from the battle for Baghdad show Iraqi citizens starting to wave cautiously to the U.S. and British soldiers bearing down on the capital.