AP, USA Today, Wash. Times uncritically reported Bush assertion of progress in Iraqi cities of Mosul, Najaf

Coverage of President Bush's speech by the Associated Press, USA Today and The Washington Times repeated the president's claims of success in Mosul and Najaf, without mentioning that both Iraqi cities still face continued security issues as well as religious and ethnic tensions.

Two major news outlets, in their coverage of President Bush's speech about the state of affairs in Iraq, reported without challenge the president's claims of success in two troubled Iraqi cities. A December 7 Associated Press report and a December 8 USA Today news article on Bush's December 7 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations about reconstruction in Iraq uncritically reported his claim of accomplishments in the cities of Najaf and Mosul as evidence of the progress of reconstruction efforts. A December 8 Washington Times editorial provided a similar assessment of reconstruction in those cities. By contrast, coverage of the president's speech in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times critically assessed the president's claims, reporting that both cities still face continued security issues as well as religious and ethnic tensions; an Associated Press article that similarly assessed conditions in Najaf and Mosul did not receive nearly as widespread publication as the AP's article covering the president's speech.

Both the AP and USA Today noted the president's claims regarding Mosul without challenge. The AP article, by reporter Deb Riechmann, offered Bush's claim that Najaf and Mosul were “two cities where headway is being made.” Riechmann did note that "[i]n focusing on progress in the two cities, however, Bush did not dwell on violence-scarred cities like Baghdad or western expanses that have been a gateway for foreign militants." Similarly, the December 8 edition of USA Today, in an article by staff writers David Jackson and Andrea Stone, reported only that Bush had pointed to “Najaf and Mosul as prime examples of cities where reconstruction plans are working.” A December 8 Washington Times editorial presented a similarly one-sided view of progress in Najaf and Mosul:

Najaf used to be one of Iraq's worst problem areas; now it has an elected government, political campaigns and signs of new economic activity. Iraqi police handle security; U.S. forces are now 40 minutes outside town, as Mr. Bush observed -- a sign that a place once overrun by terrorist militias is returning to a normalcy it never enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, whose thugs terrorized the Shia city.

In 2004, Mosul ranked with Fallujah as perhaps the most infamously violent place in the country; today U.S. forces are moving into a supporting security role. Insurgent violence is still a problem, but last year's chaos is over, and the city's political leadership has regained control. As one of Iraq's most populous cities and a center of commerce, Mosul's improvements rank among the most encouraging signs that things are improving on the ground in Iraq.

By contrast, reports in the December 8 editions of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times each provided independent assessments of the situation in Najaf and Mosul. The Post stated that "[i]n Najaf, militia fighters of the two rival religious parties that control the Shiite holy city recently clashed in street battles. A few days ago, former prime minister Ayad Allawi was attacked during a visit by an angry, rock-throwing mob that some Iraqis charge was backed by a militia -- and that Allawi called an assassination attempt." The New York Times article on the president's speech also described the attack on Allawi, noting that local security forces “did nothing to stop the attack” because of their loyalty to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia American forces battled last year in Najaf.

Regarding Mosul, the Post reported that “last Friday, Iraq's government imposed emergency law and a curfew in Sunni-dominated Mosul and throughout Ninevah province, and a senior U.S. official in Baghdad yesterday referred to the city of about 1.7 million as 'nasty Mosul.' ” The New York Times reported that the Mosul police “still must be heavily backed by American firepower” when facing insurgents and that the “starkly sectarian nature of the security forces is evident, as the largely Sunni police are sharply at odds with the Kurd-dominated Iraqi Army in the north.”

Both the Post and the Los Angeles Times articles also reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during her recent visit to Mosul, never entered the city itself due to security concerns. Instead, the military transported her from the airport to her destination in the area using a Black Hawk helicopter. The Los Angeles Times further reported that security concerns kept Rice from flying over the city; instead her helicopter had flown around it, through mostly unpopulated areas.

The Los Angeles Times report also provided the assessments of "[p]rivate analysts," who said that “each city had made progress. But they cautioned against reading too much into the improvements”:

Patrick Clawson, a longtime Iraq analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, said it was “a fair statement” that Najaf had improved. Although Mosul had improved, he said, it had suffered reversals before.

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also a nonpartisan think tank, said that Najaf was “a fairly homogeneous Shia city” that wasn't representative of the real challenges in Iraq. And, he said, in Mosul the U.S. had frequently “patched one leak only to find another.”

The same day as Bush's speech, the AP also put out two stories on conditions in Mosul and Najaf, respectively, that reported many of the same issues covered in the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times articles. However, far more newspapers appear to have picked up Riechmann's article on Bush's speech than the contrasting stories on conditions in the two cities, according to searches of Google News* and Nexis.** In particular, the Nexis search revealed five papers that ran Reichmann's story but did not run either of the AP stories that challenged the administration's claims: The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News, The St. Petersburg Times, The State in Columbia, South Carolina, and The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland.

From the December 8 USA Today article by David Jackson and Andrea Stone:

Citing Najaf and Mosul as prime examples of cities where reconstruction plans are working, Bush said: “Many who once questioned democracy are coming off the fence. They're choosing the side of freedom.”

Bush blamed many of Iraq's current problems on the ongoing insurgency and on Saddam Hussein's former regime.

From the December 8 Washington Times editorial titled "Progress in Iraq":

Najaf, Mosul and the Iraqi economy: These were the three pillars of President Bush's speech yesterday before the Council on Foreign Relations, and they are three of the best reasons why Howard Dean is utterly wrong to predict American defeat in Iraq. One wouldn't know it from the acrimonious debate in Washington, but the two former trouble spots are rapidly joining the 80 percent or so of Iraq that suffers little or no violence, while the Iraqi economy is looking better than it has in years.

Najaf used to be one of Iraq's worst problem areas; now it has an elected government, political campaigns and signs of new economic activity. Iraqi police handle security; U.S. forces are now 40 minutes outside town, as Mr. Bush observed -- a sign that a place once overrun by terrorist militias is returning to a normalcy it never enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, whose thugs terrorized the Shia city.

In 2004, Mosul ranked with Fallujah as perhaps the most infamously violent place in the country; today U.S. forces are moving into a supporting security role. Insurgent violence is still a problem, but last year's chaos is over, and the city's political leadership has regained control. As one of Iraq's most populous cities and a center of commerce, Mosul's improvements rank among the most encouraging signs that things are improving on the ground in Iraq.

From the December 7 Associated Press report by Deb Riechmann:

Bush cited Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, and Mosul in northern Iraq -- the stage for some of the bloodiest battles of the war -- as two cities where headway is being made. In focusing on progress in the two cities, however, Bush did not dwell on violence-scarred cities like Baghdad or western expanses that have been a gateway for foreign militants.

He said victory will be achieved when insurgents and others seeking to derail democracy in Iraq can no longer threaten the future of the nation, when Iraqi security forces can safeguard their own citizens and Iraq is not a haven for terrorists plotting attacks against the U.S. Yet, Democrats argue that U.S. engagement in Iraq is open-ended, costly in terms of lives and dollars, and they say the president refrains from giving the American people an idea of when U.S. troops might be able to return home.

* Google News searches: “Bush cited Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, and Mosul in northern Iraq -- the stage for some of the bloodiest battles of the war” (Reichmann article) and “former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi visited the Imam Ali shrine, among the holiest in Shiite Islam” (A closer look at Najaf)

** Nexis searches: "'Bush cited Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, and Mosul in northern Iraq'" for dates on or after 12/7/2005, on the All News database. Newspapers running the story were then searched using Nexis for “Najaf or Mosul,” in the same time period in order to find any other stories about those cities in those papers.