From the time the US and coalition forces deposed Saddam and his Ba’athists, over 25 million newly free Iraqis have had the opportunity to develop a society along a new path; the nature of that path has faced challenges from Iraqi sects, international terrorist groups, and foreign states, and its direction has been hotly debated.

I have believed for some time that Iraqis have been making gradual but clear progress on many fronts in their attempt to rebuild a society — in terms of democratic reform, economic development and reconstruction, and other key elements of civil society. A little over a year ago, I noted signs of economic liberalization including the introduction of a flat tax and openness to foreign investment, which led some to forecast double-digit growth rates — Newsweek ran a story just last month expressing their utter surprise that “Iraq’s economy is growing strong, even booming” at double-digit rates. Iraq had just run another successful election, once more relatively peacefully and without signs of widespread flaws. Reading the news, one felt that despite the serious threat posed by violent radicals, Iraqis themselves were primarily dedicated to rebuilding their lives outside the environment of a psychotic dictatorship.

OK, I should clarify that. There were always significant elements in the media that made the situation out to be on the brink of or beyond total collapse; a number of fringe columnists also portrayed a country so dysfunctional that returning Saddam to the helm would have been an improvement. However, mainstream opinion still treated this view as far-fetched fantasy.

More recently, though, the apocalyptic view of Iraq seems to have gained considerable ground among journalists, politicians, and citizens. More horror stories about violent fanatics came out, some analysts believed the Democrats’ mid-term election gains stemmed from their opposition to the Iraq war, and support for President Bush faded in polls. As I wrote at the beginning of this post, I had believed that Iraqis were making real progress; however, I always considered the possibility that naysayers had a more accurate understanding of the situation than I did, and in the recent run of anti-war sentiment I spent even more time reconsidering the events on the ground.

I personally recollect the moment when I decided to reevaluate the most fundamental aspects of the status of Iraq: I had reached a new level of disgust upon reading in my local newspaper an AP story detailing the destruction of mosques, and people being burned alive, while Iraqi soldiers stood by doing nothing. Surely when even soldiers and whoever else was around at the time — civilians? journalists? — stood by and watched as innocent people burn, one cannot reasonably describe it as a normal society that is rebuilding itself!

Of course, as you probably know by now, it appears that this did not happen. In fact, it appears that many things did not happen. Jamil Hussein, the only putative source for this and other stories, may not even exist. What does exist?

In light of this story in which the bulk of “facts” were made up and published without question, we can look back at the Killian documents fraud at CBS, the Adnan Hajj fraud at Reuters and other similar cases, and it appears that the mainstream media’s journalistic methods simply do not work. In particular, the media companies’ reliance on sources and stringers with dubious motives, and their obstinate defenses in the face of all evidence has led to these news outlets’ complete inability to report on events in a way that I can reasonably expect to be true beyond the vagaries of ordinary human error and uncertainty. Considering the mandate of news media, this strikes me as a major failure.

So what about Iraq? Well, a major media failure does not imply that everything is rosy in Iraq; it’s still clear that violent attacks result in the loss of too many innocent lives. However, in my reexamination of Iraq taking into consideration that the mass of reports covering events on the ground stems from a broken method of journalism that relies on many questionable links throughout the chain of repeaters, I still see Iraq as comprising more people who are intent on creating a society in which they can live their lives than psychopaths bent on destroying that nascent society. Iraq is a budding democracy with significant freedoms in a troubled region that deals in death.

I’ll still maintain an open mind, obviously, and reexamine and update my awareness of the status of Iraq. This will be made easier once journalism is fixed, which becomes more possible as more people realize it’s broken.

As for fixing the news media, while it’s a tough process that may require a considerable reformation, one has to start somewhere. I love Doug Stewart’s idea at Literal Barrage, “crypto journalism”:

Each reporter ought to collect a PGP/GPG key (or a similar analog) from each of their sources, or, in the case of anonymous sources, assign them a key. Each of these sources could collect signatures from various and sundry journalists, other sources, etc. When the time came to post a story, the journalists responsible for the content ought to make the cryptographic key for each of their sources available to the public which would essentially allow the public to check the trustworthiness of a source almost instantly. Even if a source were committed to their anonymity, they could maintain a single key or a series of keys, each of which would obviously have a much lower “trustworthiness rating” than a named source, or at least one that has had enough time to collect a large number of signatures. Essentially, the public would be given a mostly fool-proof way to track not only the reliability of sources, but of the journalists themselves. Those prone to using anonymous sources (or sources with few key signatures) could have their own status as an unbiased observer immediately called into question.

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