But some journalism doesn't alert entrepreneurs to the goings on at Google, doesn't point book clubs to the 10 best books of the year or parents toward Shrek: the Musical—sometimes an article really is written for everyone, to remind us in a crisis why it is so important that we care.
This is what T. Christian Miller of the investigative non-profit Pro Publica did on December 13, in collaboration with the New York Times’ James Glanz. their article details a 513-page federal history of America's reconstruction efforts in Iraq, and how the U.S. government released inflated numbers to exaggerate the region's progress.
Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.
The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed. …
… Titled "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," the new history was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here. Copies of several drafts of the history were provided to reporters at The New York Times and ProPublica by two people outside the inspector general's office who have read the draft, but are not authorized to comment publicly.
Like David Carr said today, it takes a scandal to remind us that investigative journalism is here to stay.
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