Given the fact that the vast majority of reporters in Iraq are getting their stories from outside sources via phone, whilst ensconced in their secure hotel rooms, I found this excerpt from "The History of the Peloponnesian War" to be particularly illuminating. Kind of makes one think wistfully of what the real stories from Iraq (and elsewhere) would be if the standard set down by Thucydides, two thousand forty seven years ago, were followed today. One can only dream:
And with regard to my factual reporting of the events of the war I have made it a principle not to write down the first story that came my way, and not even to be guided by my own general impressions; either I was present myself at the events which I have described or else I heard of them from eye-witnesses whose reports I have checked with as much thoroughness as possible. Not that even so the truth was easy to discover; different eye-witnesses give one side or the other or else from imperfect memories. And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element. It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand cleary the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to mee the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last forever.
--Thucydides, Book One, Page 48, "The History of the Peloponnesian Wars", 431 BC
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