NYT Blames AP for Negative Iraq Coverage
NYT - Editors Ponder How to Present a Broad Picture of Iraq
But this 'confession' is no more than a ploy. The AP, NYT and Co. consistently emphasize negative news from Iraq because they are implacably hostile to the Bush administration and secondarily to the war. Claiming their bias is somehow inadvertent is nonsense. Counting electricity is so easy even PECO can do it. And covering school openings is tricky? It's not like the media is being asked to infiltrate and expose the inside story on Al Qaeda.
For example, she said, the editors understood that it was much easier to add up the number of dead than to determine how many hospitals received power on a particular day or how many schools were built.The NYT tacitly admits that the mainstream media coverage of Iraq is pathetic and largely confined to counting bodies. And apparently its because its easier to measure corpses than electricity. Pretty remarkable admission in my view - the media has now decayed to the point that it reports 'All the News that's Easiest to Print'. Probably explains the headlines given over to a sandstorm in Iraq last week - weather coverage is pretty much hassle free.
But this 'confession' is no more than a ploy. The AP, NYT and Co. consistently emphasize negative news from Iraq because they are implacably hostile to the Bush administration and secondarily to the war. Claiming their bias is somehow inadvertent is nonsense. Counting electricity is so easy even PECO can do it. And covering school openings is tricky? It's not like the media is being asked to infiltrate and expose the inside story on Al Qaeda.
- sheikh X at 10:44 AM
2 Comments:
I really can't imagine that counting electricity and school openings is all that easy in a fragmented, fractured country where Western reporters are so intensely subject to danger when they leave their hotel rooms. They still leave, of course, which should be commended. But it's still an impossible environment in which to report.
But the real point is you echo the standard conservative anti-MSM argument: Why only report the bad stuff?
This is why: PEOPLE GETTING KILLED IS BIGGER NEWS THAN KIDS GOING TO SCHOOL. Period. Dog bites man? No story. Man bites dog? Front page.
Counting electricity is very easy and there have been several reports out showing electricity production and consumption are both above pre war levels. School openings? You kidding? Telephone interview would be a good start.
Odd isn't it, that journalists are so keen on 'context' that MSM news has become a series of opinion pieces. Yet the context for people getting killed, is ongoing (and successful) resurrection of civil society. It's this process that the murder of civilians is attempting to derail. So if context really is critical for us poor ignorant readers, why not provide it.
And lets face it, people getting killed in Iraq is big news now, but it wasn't big news before the invasion. You'll recall CNN admits it voluntarily kept mum about Saddam's atrocities (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/11/sprj.irq.cnn.plot/)
As Hitchens said - there are two tyes of people. Those who'd heard of and were concerned by Abu Ghraib before the invasion, and those who only cared after.
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