McClatchy's 12/5 piece on Defense Secretary Robert Gates is awful in every way. It lasts twelve paragraphs (if you count one stand-alone sentence as a paragraph). Seven of the paragraphs are devoted to the car bombing that killed 14 during the Gates visit. You can read the McClatchy article here.
The article was written by Jamie Gumbrecht and Hussein Kadhim. Readers of this blog might remember Jamie Gumbrecht is the pop culture reporter from McClatchy's Herald-Leader newspaper in Kentucky. She is the latest reporter assigned to McClatchy's Baghdad bureau.
The McClatchy article provides no context or information to help McClatchy readers evaluate developments in Iraq, or even the purpose of Gates' visit.
Contrast the McClatchy piece with the AP story covering the Gates visit and the car bombing. Written by Robert Burns in Washington and Hamid Ahmed in Baghdad, the AP piece explains the purpose for Gates' trip, and includes comments from Iraqi government officials as well as US brigade commanders who met with Gates. Plus, the article includes this helpful info:
U.S. brigade commanders who met with Gates, then talked to reporters later, dismissed the deadly Wednesday car bombing in Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood as desperate extremists trying to make a statement. And they reeled off statistics in their areas of responsibility showing steep declines in attacks.
"One (roadside bomb) is to me an act of desperation," said Col. Jon S. Lehr. He said that when he first arrived in Iraq, he was seeing 553 attacks a month, and noted there were just 49 in November.
Final grades: AP A, McClatchy D-.
