Dog Bites Halal Man
By Mitch Berg
John Hinderaker at Powerline notes that even the NYTimes is noticing; mainstream media coverage of Iraq is in freefall.
John concludes:
The conclusion of the Times piece is revealing, too:
Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.
It’s interesting that the journalists themselves link their employers’ interest in Iraq to the election. I think it’s fair to say that the mainstream media’s interest in Iraq has always been driven largely by the opportunity to spin events there in a way that advances a political agenda. Remember al Qaqaa? That story dominated the news for a week before the 2004 Presidential election. It was a story of great importance, however, only as long as it could be used to help John Kerry’s Presidential campaign. Once the election was over, al Qaqaa was never heard of again. With hindsight, that episode might be taken as a paradigm of far too much of the mainstream media’s coverage of the war.
So the bad news is that the mainstream media is, for whatever reason (and I’m neither rushing nor shying away from ascribing cynical, political motives to this) is losing interest in covering Iraq.
The good news? The mainstream media is losing interest in covering Iraq. Since we can not trust the MSM to be evenhanded in its coverage, it’s just as well that our troops can do their jobs without a malignant buzzard on their backs.
Oh, of course it’d be good if the media did manage to get the good news out – but that’d only bolster the case of the “stay the course” candidate.
And we couldn’t have that.
