And since I'm posting about Stars and Stripes, I should give the paper credit: It has the best coverage of Iraq by a Western media outlet today. It receives funding from the Department of Defense but is editorially independent -- no S-2 folks poring over each story before it goes out. Its reporters certainly don't envision themselves as stenographers for guys with stars on their shoulders.

But apparently they're doing too good of a job for the military's taste.

From today's edition:

Asserting that Stars and Stripes "refused to highlight" good news in Iraq that the U.S. military wanted to emphasize, Army officials have barred a Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division that is attempting to secure the violent city of Mosul.

Officials said Stripes reporter Heath Druzin, who covered operations of the division’s 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team in February and March, would not be permitted to rejoin the unit for another reporting tour because, among other things, he wrote in a March 8 story that many Iraqi residents of Mosul would like the American soldiers to leave and hand over security tasks to Iraqi forces.

"Despite the opportunity to visit areas of the city where Iraqi Army leaders, soldiers, national police and Iraqi police displayed commitment to partnership, Mr. Druzin refused to highlight any of this news," Major Ramona Bellard, a public affairs officer, wrote in denying Druzin’s embed request.

So the reporter's main crime, in the view of military officials in Mosul, was that he reported what Iraqis told him? Aren't these the people the Pentagon, Central Command, Multi-National Force-Iraq, et al, say we're there to help?

There are a few other allegations: Druzin used quotes out of context (the old standby of an angry PAO), he "behaved unprofessionally" (no examples given in this story) and that he asked to use a computer to file a story during a communications-blackout period (he can ask; they can say no).

But here’s a whopper:

Additionally, Col. Gary Volesky, the 3rd Brigade’s commander, asserted that Druzin "would not answer questions about stories he was writing."

Someone should tell Col. Volesky there's something called the First Amendment. Reporters don't need to say what they're working on -- some do as a courtesy, but it's far from a requirement -- and if the colonel tried to quash the story, it gets into a thorny issue: prior restraint by the federal government.

Or maybe the military should read the introduction to its own ground rules for embedding in Iraq: "These ground rules recognize the inherent right of the media to cover combat operations and are in no way intended to prevent release of embarrassing, negative or derogatory information."

Set those alarms a few minutes early tomorrow. Your humble correspondent will be on KMPS-FM (94.1) to talk about my recent embed with the 81st Brigade Combat Team. I’ll be chatting with the folks of the Ichabod Caine and The Waking Crew show.

I’m scheduled to start yabbering at 6:44 a.m.

BAGHDAD – Sometimes the acronym many people use for The News Tribune can elicit a strange response.

Take, for instance, a conversation I had a few days ago while following Col. Larry Saunders at the Baghdad Police College. He introduced me to one of the instructors.

“This is Scott Fontaine,” he said. “He’s a reporter for the newspaper from my hometown, the Tacoma News Tribune.”

The instructor thought for a second and smiled.

The interpreter let out a giggle before translating: “He said, ‘If you can have a paper called the TNT, I will start a newspaper called the IED.”

Hey, that’s catchy. But has he seen newspaper companies’ stock prices lately?

RAMADI, Iraq – One advantage to being away from the United States is not having to worry about these faux controversies – the missing white girl du jour, et al – that the folks at the cable news networks love.

Armed Forces Network Television was broadcasting the feed from “Larry King Live.” The topic was marijuana legalization. A talker, right? So who do they get debating it?

On the pro-legalization side was Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Guy’s a former presidential candidate, an elected official, has a pretty dedicated group of followers.

The anti-legalization point of view was voiced by “actor” Stephen Baldwin.

Seriously.

And this was after a wide-ranging discussion of Anna Nicole Smith.

I don’t have the instant access to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and others out here – and that’s not such a bad thing.

I was reading this story and found a quote interesting (emphasis mine):

"This is already one of the longest wars in American history. There's nothing new in Iraq," said Steven Roberts, a professor of media studies at The George Washington University. "We've read the stories of instability in the government a hundred times. Every single possible story has been told, and so there is enormous fatigue about Iraq."

That might be true for people who only care to read about instability in the government. But I can attest from plenty of e-mail and conversations that people want to read about what their hometown soldiers are doing. Because while some might forget we're fighting a war in Iraq, it's a daily reality for thousands of soldiers and their loved ones. I could spend a year in Iraq and still not tell all the stories that deserve to be told.

The right badge is everything in Iraq. Some badges will get you in any building. Others won’t get you anywhere.

Before I could start my embed, I had to report to the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad so I could get a press ID. That isn’t difficult, but it takes a mountain of patience. Here’s a recap of my four-day quest for a press badge:

Monday
I looked out the window of my airplane for my first glimpse of the Middle East. It wasn’t much: Many of the buildings appear as brown as the land, and a thick cloud of dust blurred out the horizon.

I walked off the plane. Cigarette smoke reached the walkway before I stepped into the terminal. Arabs wearing dishdashas and Americans sporting a lanyard displaying their Department of Defense civilian contractor card both ignored the no smoking signs posted around the airport.

The wait for a visa took more than an hour. The Arabs on our flight had left, leaving dozens of Americans standing around an undersized waiting area. They passed the time in one of four ways: smoked, complain about how bad the wait was, compared stories about their last trip to Kuwait or stared blankly into the distance.

After 90 minutes, immigration agents in crisp blue uniforms asked a few cursory questions, took their fee and stamped my passport. I found my luggage downstairs and passed through customs, where another agent in a crisp blue uniform didn’t bother to look at my passport. He grunted and waved me through.

=> Read more!

Military veterans are very proud, and very particular, about their service medals. We get that.

So we took it seriously when the News Tribune reader representative took a Monday morning call from a reader who wanted to report an error in our obituary story headlined "WWII officer led prisoner rescue."

The Associated Press story reported the death of Robert Prince, a U.S. Army officer who led the Jan. 31, 1945, assault on a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines, which led to the rescue of 571 prisoners of war. Prince died on New Year's Day in Port Townsend. He was 89.

The part that caught our reader's eye said that Prince was awarded "the U.S. Army's highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross." The reader, a veteran himself, said the highest honor is actually the Medal of Honor.

Turns out we're both right. And you can't say that very often.

The Medal of Honor, the highest military award issued by the United States, can be awarded to any member of the armed forces. The Distinguished Service Cross, on the other hand, is the highest award given solely to members of the U.S. Army.

We're running a clarification in Tuesday's paper -- not a correction, because the story was not wrong.

At our newspaper, we don't publish a lot of so-called "handout" photos provided by the U.S. military. We have our own staff photographers to take images at Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base, and we rely on wire service photographers for news overseas.

But an AP story today about a doctored photo of a prestigious Army newsmaker gives us food for thought.

The Associated Press on Friday suspended the use of photos provided by the Defense Department after the Army distributed a digitally altered photo of the U.S. military’s first female four-star general.
The image of Army Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody is the second Army-provided photo the AP has eliminated from its service in the last two months.
The AP said that adjusting photos and other imagery, even for aesthetic reasons, damages the credibility of the information distributed by the military to news organizations and the public.
“For us, there’s a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting actual content from an image,” said Santiago Lyon, the AP’s director of photography.
Lyon said the AP is developing procedures to protect against further occurrences and, once those steps are in place, it will consider lifting the ban. He said the AP is also discussing the problem with the military.
Col. Cathy Abbott, chief of the Army’s media relations division, said the Dunwoody photo did not violate Army policy that prohibits the cropping or editing of a photo to misrepresent the facts or change the circumstances of an event.
In the original photo, the general appears to be sitting at a desk with a credenza and bookshelf behind her. Three stars on her uniform identify her as a lieutenant general, her rank before Friday’s promotion.
The altered photo, distributed by the Army and run on the AP’s photo wire Thursday, shows Dunwoody in fatigues in front of an American flag. Her rank, affixed to the front of a soldier’s tunic, is not visible.
“We’re not misrepresenting her,” Abbott said. “The image is still clearly Gen. Dunwoody.”

What do you think? Should the military be manipulating photographs this way? Is the news media overreacting?

Incidentally, we are putting a story about Dunwoody's historic promotion on Page A3 Saturday. Accompanying it will be a picture taken by a wire service photojournalist during Friday's ceremony at the Pentagon.

UPDATED 11/17/2008: Fort Lewis spokeswoman Catherine Caruso called to make it clear that Fort Lewis does not manipulate photos it provides to the media. This would be a violation of Army regulation 360-1, Chapter 13-4. (Read it here.)

"We don't take things out of photos and we don't put them in," Caruso called to tell me. "The second you make a change like that, it becomes a photo illustration."

The Department of Defense must've been working off different sheet music in the Dunwoody case.

The most common type of Army "handout" photos we use at the TNT -- mug shots of soldiers who died in the line of duty -- are typically provided by family members, with Fort Lewis as a third-party conduit. Army public affairs specialists can't vouch for the integrity of those photos, Caruso said, although they do reject them if it's obvious they were altered.

My colleague, wire editor Kathleen George, sent me this article from the Washington Post. The newspaper reports that, as the security situation improves in Iraq, Western media outlets are beginning to pull correspondents out of the country.

Of course, this is good in the sense that the country is getting much safer. But bad because there will be less information during this crucial time.

Some of the Post's findings:

● Embeds with U.S. troops dropped from 219 in September 2007 to 39 last month.

● Only four newspapers staff full-time Baghdad bureaus.

● CBS and NBC no longer have a year-round presence in Iraq.

● The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post published 858 front-page stories from Iraq in 2003. It dropped to 379 last year and to only 138 through the first nine months of this year.

Ouch. There are a bunch of reasons: Stateside stories like the election and the economy are pushing Iraq off the front page. And newspapers aren't exactly awash with extra cash these days. Still, I don't think too many people want to see Iraq coverage go the way of Afghanistan: A few outlets have one or maybe two guys on the ground, their stories destined to run somewhere way inside the paper or deep into a broadcast.

UPDATE: The McClatchy Co., The News Tribune's parent company, still maintains its Baghdad bureau and hasn't pulled anyone out. Our sister papers are continuing embeds, too.

I have decided to take The News Tribune's offer of a buyout and leave the paper after 21 years here as a reporter and editor.

It's hard to go, for sure, but the truth is I have been thinking about a change for some time now. I'm looking forward to starting something new.

I'll wrap things up here next week. I don't think the editors have decided who will cover the military beat, but I suspect they'll make that assignment soon.

In the meantime, thank you, readers, for your interest and your support.

Sharon Cohen of The Associated Press has done a terrific job getting inside and telling the personal stories of the Minnesota National Guard soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 34th Infantry Division.

The brigade spent 22 months on active duty – 16 of them in Iraq, longer than any other unit.

We're running her seven-part series, The Long Haul, although with all the items competing for your attention on our home page you might have missed it.

The Seattle Indymedia Center has its own wrap up of last week's events at the Port of Tacoma and outside Fort Lewis, from the protesters' perspective.