28 September 2006

Shhh... Don't mention the WAR!















No, not that war.


According to Eric Boehlert
at Media Matters, the big three
network newscasts will end the month having spent a grand
total of 40 minutes covering the Iraq War.

It's inevitable -- and understandable -- that
over the 43-month span of the conflict in Iraq,
media interest would ebb and flow, as well as
be dictated by events on the ground. And in
2005, as well as into early 2006, there was a
legitimate argument to be made that Iraq
fatigue had set in among reporters, editors,
and producers, as well as news consumers,
with both sides growing tired, or at least
somewhat immune, to the almost daily
dispatches of the latest IED explosion and
the steady drip, drip, drip of U.S. casualties.

But the civil war currently raging inside
Iraq
-- it has claimed nearly 7,000 civilian
casualties in the last two months -- is a
different story altogether; one that begs for
sustained, detailed coverage. After all, the
country that the United States invaded, the
country it has spent tens of billions of dollars
trying to rebuild, where nearly 3,000
Americans have been killed, and the country
Bush promised was going to stand as a
beacon of stability in the region is teetering
on collapse, with sectarian violence tearing
sections of Baghdad apart.

Yet, instead of racing towards that important
story, the press appears to be turning away
from it just as nervous Republicans nationwide
are also turning away from it. To quote
Matthews
, "It [the war] has been taken off
television, and Bush must love it."

And crap like this doesn't help either.