Iraq War Coverage Declines as Conditions Improve Part 2

 Cross posted at Grizzly Groundswell

 This is the second story that I have found this month that writes about the fact that the Iraq war is not being covered in the news now that the situation is improving. You can read my first post on this subject here. The reason that I feel the need to write about this is that I feel that it vindicates one of my positions on the media.

 The media wants either Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton to be the next president. The media wanted the Republicans to lose control of the house and senate in 2006, and they got their wish. The media, and the Democrats, were able to use the Iraq war for the benefit of the Democrats when the war wasn’t going well. It was all we heard about on the news. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the presidential election. The situation began to improve as the surge took hold. As the situation improved, the media slowly but surely stopped covering the war because the war was no longer useful in their goal of getting Democrats elected. In fact, the war became harmful to their ultimate goal.

 Lets take a look at some of the numbers.

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 article goes onto say that it could be possible that the fatigue factor has set in and that is why coverage is down, yet the article then goes on to pinpoint the precise time that the coverage began to dwindle.

It’s possible to pinpoint the exact week that the switch turned off. The war averaged 30 minutes per week of coverage last year on the three network evening newscasts up until Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces, testified in September about the surge’s progress, according to news consultant Andrew Tyndall. In the last 15 weeks of the year, the broadcasts collectively spent four minutes per week on the war.

 What? The surge is a success? America is winning? Okay, move along people, there is nothing to see here. That is the attitude the media has adopted once things began to improve for America, and decline for the Democrats who need America to lose in Iraq. 

 When I find stories of American successes in Iraq I write about them, I feel that the word must get out there. The mainstream media won’t write about it, so I do. Lately because of this I have been accused of glorifying war, and been reprimanded by commenters of how nothing good can come from war.  I am not trying to glorify war, and yes, good can come out of war. I am simply trying to write about the successes that America has accomplished in the war, I am writing about how we have turned a corner in the war. I wish we never had to go to war, but that is an unachievable goal. As far as nothing good ever coming from war, I think Jewish people would disagree with that notion when talking about WWII, as would  black people when talking about the civil war.

 There have now been studies done that show a clear connection between the improving situation in Iraq and the declining media coverage and I find this unacceptable. When it favored the Democrats to have the war in the news every day, it was. Now that it does not, it isn’t. It seems pretty clear cut to me. There is an old saying, you have to take the bad with the good. Well, the media doesn’t subscribe to the opposite, you have to take the good with the bad.

 The media doesn’t take the good with the bad, they just pretend that they don’t see it. They are doing a disservice to the men and women who wear the uniform. They are doing a disservice to the men and women who volunteer to fight and die to maintain our way of life. It’s a shame.