This weekend they published the government figures on deaths for the month of February. They provided no check of their own because they don't keep track. That would be too much work. And they're too in-the-tank to use an independent outlet like Iraq Body Count.
So they print a questionable government's figures. A questionable government, please understand, that over 10% of its population is now openly and publicly protesting. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was appointed by the US government and is kept in place by the US government. Reuters certainly isn't the first outlet to turn into a hack to whore for the US government.
Through Wednesday of last week, Iraq Body Count counts 316 people killed by violence while the government insists it was only 136.
Reuters has 'forgotten' to report on the arrest warrants a State of Law member declared last week that his party was holding (against political rivals). Or the fact that security sources were telling two different news outlets yesterday that there were 19 warrants against members of Iraqiya (Iraqiya bested Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law in the 2010 parliamentary elections).
More and more, as you follow the Western press, you are left with the distinct impression that news agencies fancy themselves p.r. agencies -- apparently unfamiliar with the fact that the Iraqi government has already decided The Podesta Group is the US agency to give them a makeover.
News via western outlets was never great from Iraq. But there were reporters, like The Times of London's Deborah Haynes, for example, who worked to refute spin. These days far too many appear to have rejected reporting to show 'support' for Nouri.
In doing so, and it is a decision made by some, they kid themselves that it helps Iraq, that Iraq needs stability.
They kid themselves while they lie to the world.
In May, Nouri will have been prime minister for seven years. That was more than enough time to show what he could do and all he could was harden divisions among the people, all he could do was enrich himself.
But reporters forget their professional obligations and inflate their sense of importance as they make the decision to air brush Nouri in the hopes that, with a little more time, he may pull it together.
Not only does such stupidity hurt the Iraqi people, it turns the so-called reporters into hacks. If they care nothing about betraying the Iraqis, you'd think they'd at least care about dishonoring their profession.