Iraq coverage

Tim RUTTEN asks whether “the U.S. media are somehow falling short on this story [of the Iraq war]” [“Pulitzers Cast a Blind Eye on Iraq,” April 9]. Can there be any doubt?

Do you remember Vietnam? Surely there is no comparison. The grisly photographs, the daily tally of body counts -- ours and theirs -- presented as “kill ratios,” the intense coverage of public protests against the war.

During the Vietnam era, whether for good or for bad (take your pick), it was unequivocally the media, through its close scrutiny and critical exposure of the government’s conduct of the war and its effects on both U.S. service personnel and their families and the Vietnamese people, that produced the negative reaction on the part of the American people that finally and belatedly spurred our government to bring that sad chapter of American history to its end.

The reporting on the war in Iraq could not be more different. I can only suppose that I was correct when, during the early days of this conflict, I argued that the administration policy of “embedding” reporters was really a way of “getting them in bed with” the administration -- that is, squelching criticism before it arose.

I can only say now, “I guess it worked.”

Pamela Hobbs

Los Angeles