(actually just before, #45/#46 . . .)
I have been strongly interested in the issue of press bias for a generation, as my home page would attest. I conclude that "the fog of war" is simply an example of the general phenomenon of the uncertainty which always attaches to breaking news. (It is accutely felt in war because of the great value and pressing need for timely and prudent decision-making).The sovereign remedy for the fog of breaking news is--time. If you are not forced into making a decision based only on breaking news, it is essential to withhold judgement until the actual facts are known with reasonable certainty. Thus, when we are concerned about "inflaming the Arab street" we are actually afraid that Arabs might make decisions on the basis of first reports (deliberately misleading in some cases) rather than letting the dust settle enough to find out from the Iraqi people, as the Iraqis themselves sort out the picture of what has been done to whom, by whom.
The truth is that all reports are interpretive; reporters who don't actually see the event firsthand (and they rarely do) listen to the reports of whoever claims most intimate knowledge of the event, and decide what they think happened. And even those who actually see an event can be subject to optical illusions or their own misinterpretations caused by their own predispositons.
Consequently you are better off reading a book about Operation Iraqi Freedom than you are watching CNN or Fox News. Of course, that book isn't in print yet. Which only means that your unwillingness to wait for the book seduces you into entering the fog of breaking news. But when you enter that fog it is well to understand the inherent limitations of that particular genre of nonfiction publication/broadcasting.
The more general point is that anyone who tries to convince you to live constantly in the fog of breaking news, and who claims to be "objective", is selling something. After all, it's far easier to burn a house down than than it is to build it, and more damatic to kill an adult than to bear and raise a child to adulthood. Consequently "No News Is Good News"--good news usually isn't "newsworthy." Such being the case, breaking news is systematically both negative and superficial--thus inherently anticonservative in tone.
It follows that a "patriotic tilt" to the news is actually necessary to make news reporting "fair and balanced." I make no appology for being a conservative, nor for listening to Fox News if I tune for news, nor for preferring a conservative commentary over "objective" news.