The Public Editor: Green reporter, Green Zone dispute, red-hot rhetoric

When The Bee's Bobby Caina Calvan volunteered for a six-week reporting stint in Iraq, he didn't have the faintest notion he would be nominated for an award.

Just a few days into his assignment, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin did the honors, nominating Calvan for "Jerk of the Year."

That was just the beginning of the accolades. In a matter of days, bloggers and their flock of sheep across the country were calling Calvan an "immature human," "a pompous ass," "disrespectful," an "embarrassment," and an "anti-American military" ideologue.

There were more, but you can't print them in the newspaper.

What was Calvan's great transgression?

He got into a spat with an American soldier manning a checkpoint who questioned Calvan's identification before finally letting the reporter and his Iraqi helper back into Baghdad's secure Green Zone.

Calvan then wrote about the encounter in a snarky, arrogant way – including his attempt to "bully" the soldier – on his new personal blog, which was intended to keep his family and friends updated about his work and life in Iraq.

Except the blog wasn't so private, as Calvan found to his everlasting embarrassment and chagrin.

A day after his Oct. 23 blog posting, Calvan woke up at 5 a.m. in his Baghdad hotel room and signed onto his computer.

"My e-mail started going crazy," he recounted in a phone call several days ago while on a reporting trip along the Kurdistan border. "That's when I started receiving all this hate mail."

His private blog was now whizzing around the very public blogosphere, put there by right-wing critics breathlessly passing it around like the discovery of a deep, dark secret, a digital Rosetta stone deciphering the media's true heart.

Even the mainstream media got into the act. On Oct. 25 USA Today's "On Deadline" Web site wrote about the controversy, including running an excerpt from Calvan's blog.

It's as if the armchair critics were pointing a big, fat finger and saying, "Aha, we caught you!"

They then proceeded to use Calvan's blog to blame The Bee, the McClatchy Washington Bureau (which supervises foreign coverage) and the mainstream media for every perceived journalistic sin known to man in Iraq.

"It was used by people with a political agenda," said Mark Seibel, managing editor in charge of foreign coverage for McClatchy's Washington Bureau. "They were trying to discredit our reporting coming out of Iraq."

Seibel noted that it's common for reporters everywhere to talk their way past guards and security, whether it's on a city street in the United States or dealing with sentries in a foreign land.

"Bobby's mistake was blogging about it and expressing his frustration."

It was paramount, Seibel explained, for Calvan and his Iraqi helper's safety to gain re-entry into the Green Zone after attending a news conference nearby at the Iraqi foreign minister's office. The pair had parked their car in the Green Zone earlier in the day, when they had no problems with their entry and identification.

Whipped into a frenzy by the bloggers, e-mailers by the dozens from all over the country sent their complaints to Calvan, my office, to Bee senior editors, McClatchy corporate headquarters and the Washington Bureau. A few had letters to the editor printed in The Bee.

One person even sent me a chart showing McClatchy's plunging stock price, saying reporters like Calvan were the cause.

Believe me, if making a rule demanding politeness from reporters would reverse the slide, it would be the company's fiduciary responsibility to impose one.

But really what I think is that this matter is entirely overblown and what is needed is this: a time out.

What we're talking about here is an escalating, ahem, urination competition between two men in a stressful situation. Just two guys making each other mad – doesn't matter if you're right-wing, left-wing, up or down.

For critics, it's like taking an argument between two men involved in a fender-bender and making sweeping judgments about the ills of the auto industry.

I wasn't there. Neither were the armchair bloggers. No military brass intervened. Words – not bullets or fists – were exchanged. Calvan eventually got in.

Zinged by the critics, he apologized for his behavior in another blog posting and praised the "many fine men and women serving in Iraq."

He didn't help himself by not telling his editors in Washington about his personal blog, catching them by surprise when bloggers unleashed their wrath.

He compounded his error by initially deleting his posting, which is considered bad form in the blogosphere. (The etiquette was news to me, too.)

The Washington Bureau has a new rule. No personal blogs allowed. "We don't want to be surprised again," Seibel said.

Now, a little more than two weeks later, the attention has faded, flashing bright for a few moments like a falling meteor and gone just as quickly.

What I want to know is whether the blogosphere's trip-wire is just mindlessly sensitive in igniting outrage or was it just a slow week in the conservatives' Internet neighborhood?

The real shame, of course, is how this Internet conniption fit over something so minor overshadows the serious journalism from Iraq. There are legitimate reader questions about coverage and stories, their selection, tone, balance and accuracy.

By the way, I'm well aware today is Veterans Day. Today's column has nothing to do with that, so please don't go there. I'm proud of our men and women in uniform. I have family wearing that uniform now.

This isn't about them. This is about politics and playing games.

About the writer:

• The Public Editor deals with complaints and concerns about The Sacramento Bee's content. His opinions are his own. You can contact the Public Editor by mail at P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852; or by calling him directly at (916) 321-1250.