BOB GARFIELD: In a press conference Wednesday, we caught this exchange between a reporter and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

JOURNALIST: Aren't you having a more difficult time making the case that things are going well in Iraq?

DONALD RUMSFELD: Things are, are -- we're trying to explain how things are going, and they're going as they are going, and we are-- we're here, pointing out what's taking place in the country. Some things are going well, and some things, obviously are not going well.

BOB GARFIELD:On Wednesday, that was an understatement. As the week wore on, the situation only got worse with Shiite militias partially controlling three southern cities, Marines fighting house to house in the Sunni city of Fallujah, and foreign civilians being kidnapped by Iraqi militiamen. But Rumsfeld stayed on message through it all, downplaying the bad and emphasizing the good, as did his staffers at the Coalition Provisional Authority press office in Baghdad. On Thursday, we caught up with Washington Post correspondent Anthony Shadid in Nasariya. Shadid has been filing from Iraq for the past year, and this week, won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Anthony, congratulations.

ANTHONY SHADID: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: According to the Associated Press, the Coalition press office in Baghdad is led by Republican Party operatives and, and staffed largely by people with GOP ties. The New York Times noted that high-ranking British officials are concerned that, quote, "events are orchestrated with the American political agenda uppermost in mind." Can you talk about your experience with the Coalition information machine in Iraq and in what ways that has hindered your reporting or just colored it.

ANTHONY SHADID: I guess there's a couple things that strike me about my interaction with it over the, over the past year -- obviously there's an ideological component there. I mean it's part of an administration that's very political and politically aware. I think that drives things less than the isolation that the CPA deals with, and I think that is-- isolation at times is startling. You understand their isolation. I mean it's a - it's a very precarious, curious situation here. But I think they're -- they have lacked an ability to get out, to get around, to sense what's going on in the street, to sense what's going on in other cities, and I think you know time and again that's caught up with them, that they've been caught u-- you know, unaware of the speed of events, the pace of events, like we've seen this week in just a matter of days.

BOB GARFIELD:Concerning the security situation, you are someone who spends very little time in press conferences and a lot pounding the pavement. There is increasingly lawlessness throughout Iraq. Four American journalists were kidnapped for several hours earlier in the week, and a day later a Japanese journalist was kidnapped. Is this affecting your ability to get to the story?

ANTHONY SHADID: You know, it is. It's definitely more precarious now than it's ever been. And even when you talk to people, all they can think about is your safety. They're worried about, you know, the danger that you're, you're putting yourself in. I think it's going to pose a real challenge to, to reporting here, because I think there's almost a, a reflexive, you know, reaction by journalists to, to harden themselves, and what I mean by that is, you know, possibly to have armed escorts, to fortify the places that they're working from. And while it's understandable, there's a risk in isolating ourselves from the story, and you know perhaps it's inevitable, but you know we, we do run the risk of falling into the same isolation that we may have criticized the, you know, the CPA for and not understanding how the story's changing and how it's moving on the ground.

BOB GARFIELD:On the flip side, there seems to be a growing reliance on reporters from Arab television stations who have become on the scene reporters by proxy because Western reporters simply can't safely get access to the story. What implications does that have, do you suppose?

BOB GARFIELD:Some coverage is politicized. There's no question about it. And, and if it's in a context that might be different from the context that Western reporters are used to reporting on, that's how I think, you know, a lot of this is information - information itself is useful, and you know we don't have a person in Najaf right now. We have an Iraqi reporter down there who's done a fantastic job. He's been able to get details. He's himself in an incredible, you know, dangerous situation. [BACKGROUND NOISE UNDER] And we feel really lucky that we have him there, so I guess I right off just don't see any far-reaching implications of that. I think any time you have second hand information, it's less preferable than first hand information, but we are reaching a point where it is, it's too dangerous in parts of this country to simply go into.

BOB GARFIELD:In your piece in Thursday's Washington Post, you, you wrote about the increasingly fuzzy line between civilians and combatants in Sadr City, the Baghdad slum where so much fighting has been going on since last weekend.

ANTHONY SHADID: You go into Sadr City and you realize the implications of what, you know, of what's ahead perhaps. You know, I think the U.S. government often wants to personalize these conflicts -- they're against one man, they're against Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden or Moktada al-Sadr -- but what we see in Sadr City, it's not that easy for the people that are in that neighborhood. There's an almost kind of a knee jerk reaction to arresting clerics. It reminds people of, of Saddam's government. It's, it's distasteful to them. I think when you see civilian casualties mount -- we've seen more than 60 people killed there since Sunday -- there's, there's a sense that even if you don't have a lot of love for Moktada al-Sadr, you have, you know, a certain affinity for your neighbors, basically, who are coming under fire. And that's where you see the nature of the opposition I think changing and becoming very fluid.

BOB GARFIELD:I want to talk to you about the language of reporting in a situation like this. As the nature of the combatants themselves is changing, seemingly before our eyes, does the language of your reportage change with it? Who's the enemy and how do you describe him?

ANTHONY SHADID: You know, that's an interesting question, because it's one thing that we really never understood before, I think, is the nature of opposition to the U.S. occupation. [DOG BARKING BACKGROUND] I think we all felt it was driven by remnants of the government, in the beginning. Even though there was a different component later with the suicide bombings. You know, now it's - we're seeing in Fallujah what looks to be popular resistance at a certain level, [DOGS BARKING] and I think it's going to be even more complex as time goes on, and I think it's not easy to put them into neat and tidy categories.

BOB GARFIELD:You know, I've always known that some day I would interview a war correspondent with a dogfight going on in the background, but I never expected it to be a fight between actual dogs.

ANTHONY SHADID: [LAUGHS] They are loud dogs, I have to say.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Well, Anthony, thank you very much. Congratulations, again.

ANTHONY SHADID: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Anthony Shadid covers Iraq for the Washington Post. He spoke to us from Nasariya. He is the winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Coming up, why Iraqi journalists can't catch a break, and how the most powerful pictures can obscure the real details of tragedy.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media, from NPR.