[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I believe your analysis breaks down here. Certainly, "if it bleeds, it leads" serves as the motto for local TV news. A good fire or murder beats the hell of out a Boy Scout getting his Eagle in the ratings. But these are not usual times. American forces advancing on Baghdad while slaughtering Iraqis is just as newsworthy as American forces not advancing because of a sandstorm and supposed supply problems, and it's being treated as such by the media.

The sandstorm and the "supply problems" will scarcely be footnotes in any decent book on Operation Iraqi Freedom. And that is the standard by which you should judge your information source. American forces advancing on Baghdad, taking light casualties, is essentially the only story.

People are hungry for news either way. What's the biggest story of the last 24 hours? A PFC POW being rescued. If that's not a "good news" story, what is?

Certainly it's good news, beyond peradventure. But coverage of it might not have overshadowed a single videotaped American combat death, let alone the repulsing of a local American attack. It did however upstage the smashing of the least contemptible Iraqi military forces, driving them from the last apparently potentially defensible postition south of Baghdad.

You seem to be saying that there's an inherent bias in these stories, in that bad news will get better ratings than good news. Maybe in peace, but not in war. Iraqi blood sells as well as American blood. Maybe even better.

I think to be fair you'd have to say that the few dozen coalition casualties have gotten at least as much coverage as possibly scores of thousands of Iraqi Army deaths. But as to the coverage of the small number of civilian casualties, that is over the top--because it is recognized by all as bad news.

I'm saying that commercially successful journalism features bad news. Any other kind of story is smilingly referred to as "human interest." That means that only people who are willing to feature reports of bad news become journalists. And that causes the "bias" in journalism. Any journalism which does not more-or-less explicitly lean against that wind--which does not seem "patriotic"--will in practice be anticonservative in tone.

[RonF]

The sandstorm and the "supply problems" will scarcely be footnotes in any decent book on Operation Iraqi Freedom. And that is the standard by which you should judge your information source.

Hindsight is always 20/20. News reports are not history books. At the time, the sandstorms and supply problems were causing issues with the American advance, and at the time this was reported. Should it have been ignored? Once the sandstorms ceased, and the security of the supply lines was tightened up, the stories ceased. It seems to me that it would have been irresponsible for the media to ignore the effects of weather and improper security on the American forces.

But coverage of [POW Lynch's rescue] might not have overshadowed a single videotaped American combat death, let alone the repulsing of a local American attack. It did however upstage the smashing of the least contemptible Iraqi military forces, driving them from the last apparently potentially defensible postition south of Baghdad.

I didn't notice any upstaging. I thought that the Coalition forces successes were quite well covered by all the media, both Fox and CNN. Due to a quirk in what I do for a living, I am able to track what's on both of these all day. When the Coalition advanced, all the media outlets covered it.