Iraqis Protest Peacefully

Washington Post Article

New York Times Article

The difference in leads struck me here. Both leads included powerful imagery in addition to the hard news, but the New York Times article put emphasis on the news before introducing the imagery and the Washington Post put the imagery first. I wonder whether NYT made the decision to emphasize news because of the powerful image above the story, which gives the imagery in a different way, whereas the Washington Post lacked a picture and therefore needed to establish the nature of the protest before telling why it happened. Other than the organizational difference, the leads were essentially identical.

The stories also both included an observation that the crowd, supporting a Shiite Muslim, did not only consist of Shiites, but also of Sunni politicians. The New York Times article introduced this in their seventh paragraph, while the Washington Post article, once again emphasizing the imagery in much of the story, put it in the thirteenth paragraph. This interested me for a few reasons. The first was because though the protest is certainly news in and of itself, almost second to that seems that it was a peaceful political demonstration at which both Shiites and Sunnis were present. This is close to unheard of, since the groups are so forcefully divided politically. It seems to me that this fact should have been introduced much sooner than either of the stories introduced it, perhaps even in the lead. Sure, it would mean sacrificing the imagery elements, but I think that with the ability of photography to tell the visual part of the story, it might have been unnecessary to introduce it in the lead to begin with.

On a side note:
Associated Press Article

I wonder if the protest will have an effect on White House policies. The basis of the democratic society is that government must pay attention to the citizens, otherwise the right to protest is meaningless. Since the US government is occupying, shouldn't they be just as accountable to the citizens of Iraq as the Iraqi government? I would ask the US government to uphold their ideal of democracy and give the Iraqis what they're asking for, or if not to that extreme, at least take a less intrusive role in Iraq's government. I believe that the atmosphere in the Middle East is electric because of the US preaching democracy and then taking the role of imperialists. It's time the US practiced what they preach.