Posted on 03/17/2008 8:12:25 PM PDT by howdy doody
Remember the war in Iraq?
The question isn't entirely facetious. The war has nearly vanished from TV screens over the past few months, replaced by stories about the fascinating presidential campaign and faltering economy.
Yet Americans continue to fight and die there, five years after the war started in March 2003.
"It's no big secret that this is a war that everyone has grown tired of," said CNN correspondent Arwa Damon
...
Statistics clearly illustrate the diminished attention. For the first 10 weeks of the year, the war accounted for 3 percent of television, newspaper and Internet stories in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's survey of news coverage. During the same period in 2007, Iraq filled 23 percent of the news hole.
The difference is even more stark on cable news networks: 24 percent of the time spent on Iraq last year, just 1 percent this year.
"The fact that it went down didn't surprise me," said Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director. "But the fact that it almost disappeared is something I didn't expect."
The fatigue factor is hard to fight.
From a journalist's standpoint, the story hasn't changed for several months. The American "surge" appears to have made progress, and while Iraq is hardly safe, pockets of the country are much safer than before.
...
"There is always news out there if you look for it," said Jon Klein, CNN U.S. president. "What too many news organizations were doing was covering the car bomb du jour, and when the car bombing ceased, the coverage ceased."
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
But how about that last damning admission from CNN? "when the car bombing ceased, the coverage ceased"?!?!
Part of me says no coverage is better than bad coverage, but from somewhere deep within comes a primal scream for justice: Cover the good news as heavily as you covered the bad news, you mediots! Especially in this election year, when good Iraq news also matters politically.
Now, I can sorta remember some radio pontificator predicting this 4 - 6 months ago. Might have been some far seeing individual.
Was it Stuart Smalley?
NO
Maybe Algore?
NO.
Maybe it was that omniscient guy on Truth Radio, yeah, that’s it it was ElRushbo!
Don’t worry. Any bad news from Iraq will get more and more of the MSM’s attention the closer we get to election day.
Not to worry it will be back in the news. The LameStreamMedia is licking its collective chops awaiting the number of US military war dead to reach 4,000. < / revulsion at the media
Whatever the producer whispers into your IFB earphone, darlin’. Don’t worry about it.
A week before Petraeus' testimony, Katie Couric did some of her best journalism since joining CBS during a trip to Iraq and Syria.
Har, har, har. No bias there!
I thought the troops were all back home now and it was over. I assumed this because the news stopped reporting on the war. If it’s not on the news, nothing’s happening and there’s nothing to report. I just figured we finally got the last al-qaida with a bunker-buster and called it a day. I thought I saw tears on Couric’s face the other day and figured she was crying because we won. OTOH maybe she was crying because she was looking at her plummeting ratings.... /sarc
Yea!
There is more violence at moon-bat “PEACE” rallies that in Faluja
Both candidates oppose the Patriot Act.
Both advocate accelerated, even immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
Both advocate cuts in Defense spending.
The party as a whole is seen as weak on Defense and lacking in foreign policy.
Now, IF the media wanted to get a Democrat elected POTUS, they'd see to it that any foreign news, especially military actions overseas, got stuck on page Z43. Is anyone surprised by this?
Couric needs to hit the stairmaster. She’s looking chunky.
What’s teh point of having a war if you can’t even lose it?
The liberals would rather have America lose this war than allow President Bush to win it, so now that it’s cleaar we’re winning, they simply ignore it, hoping that the impression that we’re losing will remain with the people and they’ll elect one of the Bug-Out Charlies as President.
bump
Does anyone with a brain doubt for a moment that the media wants the situation in Iraq to get worse?
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