The bomb-go-boom networks

Town Hall ^ | 08/03/05 | Brent Bozell

[smoothsailing]

The bomb-go-boom networks

Brent Bozell

August 3, 2005

My son's friend Todd Jones just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. At a celebratory gathering at his parents' home, we chatted a while, and I asked him what he thought were the biggest problems facing the military. Without hesitating, he shot back: "The terrorists and the media."  

In a rare moment of balance on CBS, Army Capt. Christopher Vick echoed that sentiment: "I think it's hard for Americans to get up every day and turn on the news and see the horrible things that are going on here, because there's no focus on the good things that go on. What they see is another car bomb went off." This kind of coverage is exactly what the terrorists are seeking to achieve, believes Vick.  

Mark Yost, who served in the Navy during the Reagan years, caused a stir in media circles for stating the obvious in an editorial in the St. Paul Pioneer Press: "to judge by the dispatches, all the Iraqis do is stand outside markets and government buildings waiting to be blown up."  

On CNN's "Reliable Sources," host Howard Kurtz asked Frank Sesno, a former Washington bureau chief for CNN, about the Yost column. Sesno acknowledged you get more depth from print coverage, but suggested "even then, the bias is towards that which is going wrong, that which is blowing up and that which is not working." He said Americans ask: "Is anything getting rebuilt? Are they really democrats over there? How engaged are the Sunnis? Could I see an interview with any of these founding fathers and founding mothers of this new emerging country? Can you find that? You'll have a hard time doing it."  

He's not kidding. In late June, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibraham al-Jafari came to Washington. On June 24, he appeared with President Bush at the White House and gave a speech at the National Press Club. But try and find Jafari's name in a Nexis search of TV news. Of the Big Three, only CBS seemed to notice him in Washington -- on their little-seen Saturday morning show.  

One cable-news exception was MSNBC's "Hardball" on June 23, in which NBC White House reporter David Gregory, substitute-hosting for Chris Matthews, kept trying to bait Jafari with negative questions about the Iraq "quagmire." Jafari was especially upset at Gregory's consistent use of the word "insurgents," insisting that this word would suggest the fighters are Iraqis, which many are not, and they have a broad base of popular support, which they do not.  

Even when Jafari's name popped up in other stories, it was but a brief mention en route to another quagmire story. On May 16, CBS anchor Bob Schieffer noted that Jafari made a surprise visit to the country's top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani. "He told the prime minister to bring more Sunnis into the government to help unify the country. But the latest round of killing seems intended to stir up civil war." Schieffer moved on to yet another relentless-violence story.  

NBC had only one story mentioning Jafari since he was selected by Parliament as prime minister in late April. On June 2, he was almost an afterthought in a story anchor Brian Williams pitched. "So what are American soldiers and Iraqi police supposed to do in the face of this violence, especially these suicide attacks? As NBC's Jim Maceda reports tonight, the latest crackdown on the insurgency in Baghdad sounds impressive, but many Iraqis are wondering where it is."  

Australian blogger Arthur Chrenkoff has been a one-man band bringing the undercovered good news from Iraq, often featured on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal site. Even the New York Times op-ed page featured one of his good-news listings in a graphic presentation on May 13. But here comes the reality check: How many of Chrenkoff's listed developments had previously appeared in the Times? The good news seldom gets in, and when it does, it's buried under negative headlines.  

For example, Chrenkoff's chart for the Times noted that on April 11, 65 suspected terrorists were arrested in Baghdad in the biggest joint American-Iraqi raids to date. That was included in "all the news that's fit to print," but deep in an April 13 Times story headlined "Car Bomb Near Convoy in Mosul Kills 4 Iraqis."  

You already know the media's response to the criticism: It's not their job to lead the cheers but to "tell the truth." That "truth," in their eyes, is the war was an unjustified, costly and ill-planned quagmire. Our news media can proclaim it is not their job to help President Bush win the war on terrorists in Iraq. But their job ought to be to cover all of Iraq, and not just show the American people a stilted nightly horror movie, a dinner plate of Terrorist Helper.

Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a Townhall.com member group.

©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

[sageb1]

"This kind of coverage is exactly what the terrorists are seeking to achieve..."

And our liberal MSM gives them just what they want. They aid and abet.

[El Gato]

And our liberal MSM gives them just what they want. They aid and abet.

I'd put it slightly differently. The give aid and comfort. (See US Constitution, Art. III Sec. 3)

[R. Scott]

And the worst part of it is that today’s news journalists just haven’t a clue as to why so many in the military despise them. After all, they’re just following in the footsteps of their Great Icon of Media War Coverage – Walter Cronkite, ex SeeBS anchor and head of North Vietnam’s America desk.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Borrowing from the North Vietnamese Communists' praise of the American press as their "most valuable guerrilla" I believe that P.C. is our enemy's most valued terrorist.

The "American" press continues to contribute support to an enemy -- here I thought they were commies. They just want to "bring it all down, man" I guess.

[SAJ]

Suggest you read Horowitz' Unholy Alliance.

Detailed analysis of the history of the sympathy of the anti-American Left with the jihadi a$$wipes.

[FierceDraka]

And the reason for this is because the MSMis filled with and run by - TAKE ONE WILD GUESS!

DOCTRINAIRE MARXISTS, LEFTISTS, PARTISAN DEMOCRATS, ANTI-AMERICANS, AND TRAITORS!

Simple as that.

You can bet that if there was a DEMONRAT in the White House and there was a war on, they'd be showing the good that goes on, and downplaying the bad.

[BenLurkin]

BTTT

[Not a 60s Hippy]

Dean: Socialist victory equals win for Dems

http://www.restoringamerica.org/documents/socialists_in_congress.html

Democratic Socialists of America's Progressive Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives

Taken verbatim from the Internet web site of the Democratic Socialists of America

"The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International (also in Francais and Espanol). DSA's members are building progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics...

What is Democratic Socialism?

Question: Aren’t you a party that’s in competition with the

Democratic Party for votes and support?

No, we are not a separate party. Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party. We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s leftwing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

[AFPhys]

Australian blogger Arthur Chrenkoff has been a one-man band bringing the undercovered good news from Iraq, often featured on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal site.
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I'm going to have to check this guy's stuff out...
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