By Jeff Sharlet

The holes in Edward Wong’s New York Times front-pager on a massive anti-U.S. occupation rally in Najaf are big enough to drive a bomb-laden truck through. The fact that nobody did so is one of them. Start with the paper’s choice for its main photograph, a seemingly-chaotic image of men moving in every direction, waving their sandals at a bunched-up American flag, waving scarves, Iraqi flags, whatever’s in their pockets — a portrait of a message in confusion. Then click on the slide show of “more photos”: The first, a procession of red, white, and black Iraqi flags stretching as far down a tree-lined street as the eye can see, will take your breath away. This is not what we’ve learned to think of Iraq as looking like, disciplined, purposeful, determined.

So, keep looking: The next picture shows men calmly walking over American flags, an image at contrast with Wong’s report that Iraqis “stomped” on the flag. Neither caption nor article note that this custom — walking on flags — is a standard bit of protest symbolism in the Middle East. The caption to this picture, in fact, has no relation to the image: “The demonstration, which has remained peaceful, was being held at the urging of militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.” O.k. That might make sense under a picture of Sadr, but he’s not in this photograph. Or any of them, despite being mentioned in two captions.

Next picture: Men carrying a printed yellow banner that reads, “NO U.S.A.” What does that tell us? Well, the obvious: The English-language banner is a message to the Americans. What the paper characterizes as a simple show of force is, for better or worse, an attempt to communicate with the U.S. forces. Are they getting the signal? You decide: The next caption features U.S. Colonel Steve Boylan, military spokesman, patting the U.S. on the back: the Iraqis, he says, “couldn’t have done this four years ago.” Only, they did, four years ago and fourteen years ago, thousands of Iraqis turned out in the street to protest the U.S. Because Saddam Hussein approved doesn’t mean Iraqis weren’t genuinely protesting sanctions, bombing, and then invasion. “This is progress, there’s no two ways about it,” Boylan is quoted beneath the next image, black-veiled women waving Iraqi flags, labeling a massive, disciplined rally against the U.S. a U.S. achievement. There’s some accuracy in that, at least.

The last image shows the crowd releasing colorful children’s balloons. But don’t be fooled: according to Wong, those are “angry, boisterous” balloons. Wong leads the story with that iconic image, burning American flags; but in the eight pictures that accompany the article, we see nothing but calm processions. If Wong says there were burning flags, there were burning flags; but if the photographer brings back only images of Iraqi flags in orderly procession, do the stars-and-stripes aflame deserve the lede?

Most of the rest of the article is dedicated to the following thesis: “it was an obvious effort by Mr. Sadr to show the extent of his influence here in Iraq, even though he did not appear at the rally.” Next graf: “Mr. Sadr used the protest to try to reassert his image as a nationalist rebel” — a smooth trick, asserting one’s image by not showing up. “Mr. Sadr is obviously still able to order huge numbers of people into the streets,” he writes, but he doesn’t report on the order. Sadr’s “mysterious” control of the masses is another burning flag: If Wong says this is Sadr’s show, it’s probably Sadr’s show. But if Sadr doesn’t actually show, and tens of thousands of protestors do, wouldn’t it make sense to assume that they’re more than mindless automatons, there to somehow “reassert” Sadr’s image by waving the Iraqi flag? Could it be that maybe they’re actually in the streets to protest the U.S. occupation because they themselves oppose it?

Here’s Sadr’s svengali-like message to the crowd, read by a supporter: “Oh Iraqi people, you are aware, as 48 months have passed, that we live in a state of oppression, unjust repression and occupation. Forty-eight hard months — that make four years — in which we have gotten nothing but more killing, destruction and degradation. Tens of people are being killed every day. Tens are disabled every day.” Statements of the tragically obvious, indisputable facts do not constitute marching orders.

The lone protestor quoted by Wong — after we hear more from Colonel Boylan, and get another graf on burning American flags — asserts Sadr’s image like so: “The occupier supported Saddam and helped him to become stronger, then removed him because his cards were burned. The fall of Saddam means nothing to us as long as the alternative is the American occupation.”

How to follow up that? Let’s go to the colonels again, U.S. Colonel Garver, who “declined to give any information on the whereabouts of Mr. Sadr.” Absent information on Sadr, Wong simply slides to another city: “In Diwaniya, hospital officials said their wards were overwhelmed by casualties.” The reader scanning this story on the subway will assume those casualties may have been related to American-flag burning, but, in fact, they took place in another city. Important? Of course. Sadr-related? Probably, despite the fact that Sadr called for the fighting to stop.

An appropriate juxtaposition in the story? Absolutely not. Imagine an account of a demonstration of college students in Washington that shifted, toward the end and without warning, to an account of violence after a University of Maryland basketball game. Same conflation here.

To be fair to Wong, the inclusion of this odd juxtaposition is more likely the result of editorial decisions beyond his control. Rather than deal with these incidents as separate stories, they’re run together as “news from crazy Iraq.” And the reason Wong’s story is so slanted toward the U.S. spokesman’s spin is probably because Wong had limited access to actual Iraqi demonstrators. He’s not some pro-American schemer; he’s simply reporting the story as he encountered it. But that’s more important than that bete noire of liberals and conservatives, “bias.” The methodology of newsgathering in the current conditions presents us with what we can only guess are very inaccurate pictures of what’s happening.

Scratch that — the actual pictures, by Ceerwan Aziz for Reuters, Ali Haidar for the European Pressphoto Agency, Hadi Mizban for the Associated Press, and Wathiq Khuzaie for Getty Images, present us with such a radically different image than Wong’s report that we might reasonably suppose that the work of these four photographers, clearly closer to the action, collectively reveals some truths about the rally in Najaf. Good for the Times for running so many photographs. Too bad the reporting can’t keep up.

There’s an assumption amongst conservatives and liberals that The New York Times has turned against the war, and that therefore its reporting is now against the war. Some more ardent anti-war types believe that the Times, as corporate media, has always been and will always implicitly support the war. Both notions fail to take into account the Times‘ religion, its cult of objectivity. Wong almost certainly didn’t distort the story deliberately, but because the “object” on which he reported has become too inaccessible, too complex, too at odds with received wisdom to fit in the paper’s narrative. Let’s give the Times credit: They want to tell true stories; but their reporters and editors, like most Americans, don’t know what those are are anymore.