The Salon blurb: In Part 2 of his report on the press in Baghdad, Orville Schell attends a pathetic "party" at Fox News and endures surreal Bush spin in the Green Zone.

An excerpt: (free with a day pass)

March 17, 2006 | BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In recent history, there have been few wars more difficult to report on than the war in Iraq today. When I was covering the war in Indochina, journalists went out into the field, even into combat, knowing that we would ultimately be able to return to Saigon, Phnom Penh, or Vientiane where we could meet with local friends or go out to a restaurant for dinner with colleagues. Although occasionally a Viet Cong might throw a hand grenade into a bar, the war essentially was happening outside the city.

I had arrived here in Baghdad naively expecting that as an antidote to their isolation from Iraqi society, journalists might have kept up something of a fraternity among themselves. What I discovered was that even the most basic social interactions have become difficult. It is true that some of the larger and better-appointed news bureaus (with kitchens and cooks) have tried to organize informal evening dinners with colleagues. But while guests were able to get to an early dinner, there was the problem of getting back again to their compounds or hotels by dark, when the odds of being attacked vastly increase. The only alternative was to stay the night, which posed many difficulties for everyone, especially Iraqi drivers and guards.

The result is that reporters find themselves living in a strangely retro mode where their days end before sunset, and they are pulled back to their bureaus for dinner like an American family of the 1950s. Not a few have sought solace in cooking.

One evening while I was in Baghdad, a British security guard mentioned that Fox News was giving a "party" in the nearby Palestine Hotel, once the almost elegant, five-star Le Meridien Palestine on the banks of the Tigris River. I was curious both to see what had happened to this legendary hotel and also what now passed for a social gathering among foreign reporters here. So at dusk, accompanied by two armed guards, I walked over to the Palestine through the maze of blast walls. ...

In our search for the alleged Fox News party, we ask the attendant in the lobby for directions. He tells me and my guards to go to the fifth floor, but adds that in order to get upstairs, we must first go downstairs, evidently a strategy to prevent suicide bombers from going directly to their targets. In the basement, amid a stack of discarded cardboard boxes and heaps of broken plate-glass windows, an Iraqi man is kneeling on a rug in front of a cement block wall, presumably facing toward Mecca, in prayer. When we finally arrive on the fifth floor, we have to leave our guards at a checkpoint fortified with a steel door. Inside, we are greeted by the stink of disinfectant and stale air filled with the smell of curry and cigarette smoke. Down a hallway with a greasy carpet I find a small sitting room with shabby furniture and a soccer game playing on a TV. The Fox News staffers who are smoking and drinking seem glad to see almost anyone. The scene makes me think of a group of elderly retired people clinging to a residential hotel slated for demolition.

"Where are all the other guests?" I ask, as one of them thrusts a bottle of beer into my hand. Zoran Kusovac, Fox's bulky, unshaven bureau chief, takes a long drag on his cigarette and explains in his Croatian accent, "Everybody's gone home." He laughs. "It's Saturday. We wanted to have some fun. We used to be able to have parties until late at night. But now our security people told us that if we wanted to have a party, it would have to end no later than 6:00 PM, so that everyone could get home before dark. We started at 3:00!"

"It's a little like being in third grade, where everybody has to be home before dark," someone else says. Everyone laughs.

"TV means you have to get close to the action," Kusovac complains when I ask how Fox's coverage has been going. "After all, we have to get pictures. It's absolutely essential. If you're a print reporter and out in a Humvee, you can look through the window. But as a TV reporter, you have to stand up and get tape." Everyone nods, thinking, no doubt, about ABC TV's Bob Woodruff and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, who had just been wounded while out on patrol. "All of us," Kusovac said, "depend on our Iraqis whom we have learned to trust ... Our 'bona fiders.' But still, they're filters."