BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Right now, you're probably expecting some sharp commentary on the coverage of Friday's presidential debate. We don't have any, because it happened after we taped the show. Of course there was a vice presidential debate this week, and though several commentators called it a clear victory for Cheney -- especially the Chris Matthews crew on MSNBC -- they were forced to contend with polls that came to a different conclusion the next day. So it was kind of funny, but mostly forgettable. For us, the line that resounded from that debate came from John Edwards who was echoing John Kerry and even George Bush. It concerned the media coverage of Iraq. [TAPE PLAYS]

JOHN EDWARDS: You are still not being straight with the American people. I mean the reality you and, and George Bush continue to tell people --first, that things are going well in Iraq --the American people don't need us to explain this to 'em -- they see it on their television, every single day. [TAPE ENDS]

BOB GARFIELD: But do we see it every single day? It turns out, less and less. In fact, according to the Tyndall Report, which tracks the minutes network news spends each night on various issues, the time spent on Iraq is inversely proportional to the violence there. Before Iraq was handed over to the Iraqis at the end of June, there were between 40 and 50 attacks a day. The minutes devoted to covering them on the networks' evening news -461 in April, 474 in May, 305 in June. In August, a month of unprecedented violence, only 164 minutes were devoted to the conflict. By September, attacks had doubled to 80 a day, 2,368 over 30 days. Time spent on network coverage -- a paltry 205 minutes. Recently, we've heard something of the terrible violence in Samarra, but we haven't seen it. Of course, on Thursday, when there was a rocket attack on a Baghdad hotel that caused no serious injuries, we were treated to wall to wall coverage. That's because the hotel houses foreigners and journalists, and the cameras were already there. [TAPE PLAYS]

WOLF BLITZER: It looks like whoever did this -- the insurgents, the terrorists -- were trying to score a political statement, given the nature of who occupies the Sheraton Hotel.

CORRESPONDENT: You're, you're absolutely right. Terrorism is theatre, and this is now theatre on a grand scale, because the images are going -- one rocket bought them images all around the world, on everyone's televisions. [TAPE ENDS]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: According to the New York Times, many European news outlets are closing up shop in Iraq, which is no longer safe, even in the supposedly protected "green zone." American news outlets have yet to follow their lead, but reporters -- those not embedded with American troops -- mostly stay holed up in hotels, relying on freelancers. Amid the chaos, the story isn't getting out the way it used to. Matt McCallister, staff correspondent for Newsday, was arrested and imprisoned in Abu Ghraib by Iraqi forces during the war. He is still reporting from Iraq, and he joins us on the line now from Baghdad. Matt, welcome back to the show.

MATT McCALLISTER: Thanks very much for having me.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You say that a year ago you were able to stop off for a kabob in Fallujah after reporting a story there. Now you say a visit itself, never mind a lunch break, would be suicidal. Can you tell me more about how things have changed recently?

MATT McCALLISTER: This time last year, we were just sort of sauntering around anywhere we wanted to go in Iraq. I mean there was no place that we couldn't go. And I've been away. I mean, I got back about a week ago, and I, I had been away for about 6 weeks. It was already tense in the summer, of course, but this time the obsessive conversation among journalists has just been security, and people are talking about measures that they just weren't talking about in the summer.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What have you done to protect yourself?

MATT McCALLISTER: Well, it gets to the absurdity of having a conversation with my translator today about whether I should dye my hair brown. I've got relatively light hair and light skin, and when you're driving around Baghdad, you just want to blend in, and so I've, I've grown a sort of ridiculous little goatee, because all Iraqi men tend to have some sort of facial hair. I'm buying a couple of shirts that look Iraqi rather than Western, and you'd think there wouldn't be really much difference between one shirt and the next, but there is when, you know, you, you -- I stick out like a sore thumb. And then you get into much more intense security arrangements that, I don't mean to be coy, but no one's really discussing publicly because the show will appear on the internet, and what we know of Zarqawi and Co. is that they're incredibly technologically sophisticated, so we don't particularly want to sort of play our hand.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: A few things, though, that you've mentioned in your piece is that you used to rent a house, and by April you'd moved to a hotel; that you and your translator rush around in a fast car, jump out to shop, jump back in, hit the gas in case anyone is following you. But you also have noted that hours spent in hotel rooms do not beget stories. So how do you report?

MATT McCALLISTER: Instead of being spontaneous and thinking, oh, well let's go and see this person, or let's go to that neighborhood, that doesn't happen any more. I'll ask my translator to go and make an appointment, and sometimes I don't feel comfortable about making an appointment, because I don't necessarily know the people that I want to see, and perhaps they'll say to a friend of theirs, oh, you know, this Western journalist is coming to see me at 3 o'clock. Maybe he tells a friend who tells a friend. You can't be too suspicious, really. And that's frustrating, because journalists love to sit and chat, and stuff appears that you weren't expecting to come across.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You covered the war in Kosovo and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and you say reporters in Iraq don't have that traditional journalistic immunity that happens in a conflict zone.

MATT McCALLISTER: In the West Bank, for example, we would strap tape on the sides of our cars saying TV, which is essentially shorthand for "Please don't shoot me" -- to both sides. And, by and large, both sides respect that. In Iraq, we are considered by the Islamist militants and, and nationalist militants to be just another tool in the secular Christian Western domination of increasingly, as they see it, of Arab and Muslim countries.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The journalism grapevine was all abuzz this week and last week about the email from Farnaz Fassihi. She is the Wall Street Journal reporter. She wrote very candidly about conditions in Iraq in a personal email that she sent to about 40 friends, and those 40 friends sent it to their 40 friends. She wrote: "I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in anything but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't, and can't." At the risk of belaboring what may be obvious, what are the stories that you can't get at?

MATT McCALLISTER: Well, one good example is Sadr City in Baghdad, which in recent nights has been the scene of very important and very heavy fighting between American forces and the Mahdi Army, loyal to Moktada al-Sadr. Now, I used to, even in my last trip, go to Sadr City, and without worrying so much about my safety. I haven't been back there once. On the other hand, I think there's still a lot of very good journalism coming out of Iraq. Just a few days ago, there was the most horrific bombing that I've ever seen here of, of over 30 children, and we went to the hospital, as we always do, and reported on what's going on here. There are just these new and developing security concerns, and yes, it circumscribes us sometimes, but descriptions of 35 massacred children, you know, that was out there, and everyone saw it. And that's important, and, and it'll continue.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thank you so much for doing this, and keep your head down.

MATT McCALLISTER: Well, thank you. It's a real pleasure.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Matt McCallister reports from Baghdad for Newsday.