Not necessarily.
A lot of people don't turn on the TV or the home computer in the morning. Maybe they have kids home for the summer and they don't want to wake the little yardapes up. Maybe they would rather watch SportsCenter, QVC or the Weather Channel in the morning. Maybe they want to go for a jog or they want to work out. Maybe they're just in too much of a hurry. Maybe they don't want to take the trouble.
But they got the newspaper out of the driveway. Ours had Haditha as the major story, with a graphic showing which civilians were killed and exactly where.
Right now, the Bush2 administration needs a victory in which it can control the message. This could have been it. Assuming the 9 p.m. confirmation time (as in, that's when they were utterly
sure Zarqawi was dead), the White House could have announced this in the middle of primetime TV for the eastern half of the nation (where the majority of Americans live) and at the start of primetime for the western half. In the Pacific Time Zone, that would have been several hours of "Look what we and our allies did today!" The media (which the Bushies *hate*) would be racing to catch up and the Bushies would be able to direct the message -- in full view of the American people.
Controlling your own message is one of the basic tenets of political science. This administration couldn't even handle that.
EDIT-1stADD
Bush knew at
4 p.m. yesterday.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13197560/
It was not announced for another
12 hours.
Failure to control the message.