Good News is No News

…We…Must…Not…Win

The other day it struck me that there really hasn’t been much in the news lately regarding the state of affairs in Iraq. This is interesting, because up until the last couple of months there was a surge of negative reporting on a daily basis. A cynic might be tempted to write this off as a sullen media not wanting to report news that it does not like. I’m not a cynical fellow. I’m more fact-based.

Luckily this interweb thingy comes in handy for end-running around the press and doing some reality-based thinking. I did some independent checking on U.S. casualty figures from some very non-friendly sources. By golly, look what I found!

Now, I admit to being no expert on military strategy, but this chart would seem to show that perhaps, just maybe, this “surge” is doing exactly what its proponents said it would.

Why wouldn’t the mainstream media want to report that? That sure seems like news to me.

We seem to have reached a point where the “adversarial press” of mid-twentieth century legend has settled down into a sullen, contrarian, solidly anti-American press. They are dedicated to the proposition that any effort associated with conservative or traditional American values can...not...be…allowed...to…win. They are stunningly unpatriotic, in that they routinely place their ideology above the interests of their country as defined by the democratic process. That’s right. You heard me. I’m questioning their patriotism.

After additional study, here is the picture of the mainstream media that has presented itself.

1. Ignore good news at all costs. Self-evident by what we are seeing now. They have spent so much time establishing the narrative of administration incompetence and failure that they cannot acknowledge success without undermining their template. Of course, had they been reporting straight news all along this would present no problem at all. By promoting a specific agenda they have boxed themselves in.

2. Fixate on whatever can be dredged up as “bad news.” I’m not sure if you have noticed, but we are starting to see more and more “crazy vets” stories showing up in the news of late. I saw one on the local morning news just this morning abut the reported increase in mental health issues among Iraq veterans. We have also seen stories on the “surge” in homelessness among veterans. The subtext of these stories is, of course, “yeah, so you might have some sort of narrow ‘victory’ in Iraq, but at what cost to these brave lads (victims)?” Look for this trend to increase as the surge continues to establish peace and order.

3. Move the Goal Posts. After having spent years using the standard of casualty rates and military success as the standard of judgment, now that success is beginning to bubble up in those areas, the criteria for success have been changed. One gets the sense that even if this whole endeavor works out precisely as the President wants it to – a humane, judicious democracy in which children and lambs can lie down in peace – the response would likely be “so what took so long?” One of the unique and powerful aspects of the U.S. media is that it arrogates to itself the standards of success and failure. And it can (and does) change those whenever it feels the need.

4. Change the subject. When in doubt, - oh look, a squirrel.... Or perhaps a celebrity murder, or a Paris Hilton arrest, or a “Green Week.” One of the other interesting and powerful aspects of the media is that it gets to choose what to report. The power of this tactic has been mitigated by the alternative media, but for the millions of Americans who continue to get their news from the mainstream media, events which are uncomfortable to the press simply “disappear”. I suppose there is a “reverse news value” in this. By paying attention to the “dogs not barking” we can learn a lot about what is actually happening.

We cannot hope that this irresponsible behavior on the part of the mainstream press will change. But by drawing attention to it we can perhaps drive more Americans to the sources of news that can inform them of those things the regular media chooses to ignore. And in doing so further hasten the media’s decline into irrelevancy.

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