Media coverage reduces Iraq to violence while real families live there

Evidence

Iraq is a country now known to most Americans as a blur of bad news, a godforsaken geography of al-Qaeda terrorists and Shi‘a death squads. But Iraq is also a real place steeped in centuries of history and peopled with families who have their own dreams and aspirations for themselves and their country. People live there; they don’t just die there. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 581

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with Edward Said’s Orientalism and the humanizing impulse in The Reluctant Fundamentalist.