Michael Yon: What the media won’t tell you

We’ve all become familiar with the wonderful work of frontlines-blogger/writer/photographer Michael Yon over the years. So many times he has brought to life the stories of soldiers and civilians in Iraq that the media ignores in favor of their “if it bleeds, it leads” news mantra. Yon doesn’t sugarcoat his stories – he just gives the perspective we so often don’t see in the MSM.

Yon’s most recent piece, “Resistance is Futile,” is a challenge to the media. Captain Ed summarizes:

Yon writes of a “dogma dome” which insists that Basra has descended into chaos when it hasn’t, and that Iraq has collapsed when it has actually started to coalesce into a real nation:

[…]

Yon wants to transform his independent reporting into something more akin to a wire service, using others who are stationed in Iraq as correspondents. Major news agencies tend to have only one correspondent in Iraq, and that person usually stays in the Green Zone. Yon has been in Iraq for most of the period from the end of 2004 onward, but it’s difficult for independents to remain there because of the high costs.

So Yon is doing something rather unusual — he is offering his reports for free to members of the National Newspaper Association. Rather than charge for his dispatches as most independents would of syndicators, Yon will allow them to use the reports for free. He is putting his money where his mouth is, in order to give newspapers no excuse to recycle old stories or print new falsehoods, as he puts it. He wants an end to the dogma dome and the truth about Iraq to get to the American people.

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