Media Minimizing Iraq Progress
Newsbusters:
Read the whole thing, though most of it probably won't come as a surprise.
As far as the "staged" controversy goes, I still can't get over the fact that the media would swarm like they have over something that a) happens all the time and b) is hardly a secret to any regular political observers. I can't help but feel that this ginned-up controversy is the result of a media establishment that is more interested in reporting negative stories about our President than positive stories about progress in Iraq.
Andrea Mitchell pretty much gave it away on Thursday’s Nightly News, allowing that “Many administrations, Democrat and Republican, stage-manage events. And often the news media ignore the choreography.” But the networks didn’t want to “ignore the choreography” yesterday, because it didn’t fit their spin. Mitchell preferred to expose what she called “a rare look behind the curtain of a White House trying to sell an increasingly unpopular war.”
If the Iraq war is “increasingly unpopular” — and polls suggest it is — one reason may be because the broadcast networks have heavily skewed their news agenda toward the bad news coming out of Iraq: car bombings, U.S. casualties, terrorist attacks, squabbling among Iraqi politicians, etc., etc.
I just finished a study of every Iraq story aired on the three broadcast network evening newscasts this year, from January 1 through September 30, nearly 1,400 stories. (More) Full results are posted on the MRC’s Web site, but the bottom line is that the networks offered an extremely pessimistic view of the situation in Iraq, and the number of stories focusing on the progress and accomplishments of U.S. troops has been shrinking (down to just 7 percent of all Iraq news in August and September).
Read the whole thing, though most of it probably won't come as a surprise.
As far as the "staged" controversy goes, I still can't get over the fact that the media would swarm like they have over something that a) happens all the time and b) is hardly a secret to any regular political observers. I can't help but feel that this ginned-up controversy is the result of a media establishment that is more interested in reporting negative stories about our President than positive stories about progress in Iraq.
robert108
gilbyguy
likwidshoe
C. Y.
Carrick
Richard Rhodes
