Failure™ Magazine

War and Peace

War News Radio brings Iraq home.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Arts & Entertainment, History

According to President Bush the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq. Democrats contend that Iraq is in chaos. Who should Americans believe? The mainstream media either can’t or won’t answer the question—reduced to issuing daily casualty reports and serving as a mouthpiece for the Bush Administration and its critics. Lost in all this political posturing is the war’s impact on people in Iraq and elsewhere around the world.

Into the void comes War News Radio (WNR). For the past 12 months a group of ambitious students from Pennsylvania’s Swarthmore College have been quietly working towards filling this gap in the mainstream’s coverage of the war. Relying largely on Internet phone technology, WNR’s student correspondents conduct interviews with individuals on the ground in the Middle East, producing diverse human-interest stories that shed light on the challenges of daily life in Iraq. In the process, WNR has not only developed into a valuable source for news about the war, it may also serve as a new model for student journalism.

According to founding member, Amelia Templeton, a senior history major who regularly interviews Iraqi citizens, WNR’s mission is “to bring depth to the coverage of the Iraq War that has been missing from the mainstream media. Americans will start turning off the news if it’s just car bomb after car bomb. We’re interested in keeping people engaged and thinking about what’s going on.”

That’s easier said than done, especially for students constrained by both resources and geography. Working out of a small on-campus studio, WNR correspondents face the same challenges as any radio journalist—and then some.

Like most news stories a WNR segment comes into existence when a reporter develops an idea and conducts research to find interviewees who can address the issue. Sometimes the desired subject is easily accessible; a U.S. military officer home from Iraq, for example. But if prospective sources happen to be in Baghdad or Basra or Mosul—as is usually the case—numerous obstacles emerge.

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