Latest Iraq thread

[classicman]

I'm not sure about any of it, but still - I find it interesting that as soon as things started to look better the coverage stopped almost instantly.

[ZenGum]

I guess there are several reasons for the drop in coverage.

Firstly, the election campaign is taking up a lot more attention. Media have limited space and time.

Secondly, things going well isn't really "news". Imagine:
"And now to our CNN live cross to Andy in Bagdad..."
"Thanks John, well, I'm standing on a corner in Sadr city with Private Smith who has been manning a checkpoint since oh eight hundred, and he tells me that it's been a quiet day except that some kid threw some stones at him at oh nine thirty five. They missed, thankfully, and the insurgent fled on a bicycle. Since then Smith has been bored and thirsty..."

Combine these two factors and that accounts for a lot of the decrease. I have briefly ventured into the media, and learned that anything with pictures of fires or explosions (or hot women) goes straight to the front page, written disasters get big coverage, while good news and thoughtful analysis gets pretty much buried in the middle. It's based on what people read and what causes people to buy newspapers and watch TV shows.

You may be right, that there is a bias in some parts of the media to reporting the bad news from Iraq but not the good news. Some other parts of the media seem biased the other way.