Reporting restrictions

David Carr writes in the New York Times about The Wars We Choose To Ignore. With war coverage shrinking to a mere drip – “3% of all American print and broadcast news as of last week” – down from 25% last September according to Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, Carr highlights some of the key problems including reporting restrictions,

Ashley Gilbertson, a freelance photographer who has covered the war for Newsweek, Time and The New York Times and has written about covering the conflict in a book called “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” will be going back to Iraq in June. It will be his sixth time there, temperatures will range up to 130 degrees, and each time he has gone back there have been new restrictions.
“Many of my colleagues have turned away from the story because it has gotten to the point where they feel they just aren’t going to get anything useful, which I completely understand,” he said, adding that nonetheless, when the surge ends this summer, he wants to be there to chronicle what follows. link