Clifford D. May on Iraq & Media on National Review OnlineStart with lack of information: The average news consumer probably has no clue that Gen. David Petreaus’ new strategy has crippled al Qaeda in Iraq, that Americans and Iraqis are now fighting side-by-side against both Sunni and Shia extremists, and that the elimination of terrorist safe havens and weapons caches has improved security for average Iraqis in parts of the country that a few months ago were snake pits.
As for misinformation, how many people still believe that guards in Guantanamo flushed Korans down the toilet, that U.S. Marines committed a massacre at Haditha, and that American soldiers ridicule women disfigured by bombs, run over puppies for sport and desecrate graves for a laugh? All of this was reported in such mainstream publications as Newsweek and The New Republic. None of it is true.
Meanwhile, the barbarous violence committed by al Qaeda and the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq is scarcely noted.
Where can one go to learn what is really happening in Iraq? Michael Yon is a former Green Beret. He has been reporting from Iraq’s battlefields, mostly for his own blog (www.michaelyon-online.com). No journalist has revealed more about al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), including its “reputation for hiding bombs intended to kill parents in the corpses of dead children they'd gutted.”
He has photographed Iraqi and American soldiers as they “disinterred the remains of adults and children” from killing fields. “In one grave,” he noted, “soldiers recovered the heads of decapitated children, some with still partially recognizable remnants of flesh and hair.”
Why have the elite media not covered such atrocities — while spilling barrels of ink over the abuses at Abu Ghraib? In part, perhaps, because the conventional storyline is that Iraq is Vietnam redux: Americans are the “occupiers” and anyone who fights them must be “the Resistance.” Reporters who dispute that narrative are apt to dine alone.
As to why lower military casualty rates and fewer insurgent attacks are not seen as newsworthy, CNN’s Barbara Starr told media critic Howard Kurtz that it was not yet clear that such developments represent “a trend.” But the lines on the graph have been heading south since at least June. Is there any doubt that if U.S. forces had been losing ground for five months it would be a huge story?
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SteynOnline - BOURNE TO RUN, AND RUN, AND RUNBut not in the movies. In Hollywood, The Bourne Ultimatum is the standard template: Every plot has a government agency or well-connected corporation behind it. And anyone who doubts the influence of the medium should consider that a substantial proportion of the population now watches the news like a movie. The World Trade Center got taken out? Interesting. Who did it? Mohammed Atta and a gang of Saudi males? Yeah, yeah. But what’s the plot twist? Who really did it? Someone in the government, right? The planes were switched in mid-flight and the passengers were “disposed of in the Atlantic Ocean” (Professor A K Dewdney of the University of Western Ontario), and voice-modification technology was used to fake the phone calls to loved ones, and Flight 93 was “taken out by the North Dakota air guard” (retired Colonel Donn de Grand Pre), and anyway everyone knows fire can’t melt steel (Rosie O’Donnell), so Bush must have done it, and, if you don’t believe me, ask yourself why World Trade Center Tower 7 had to be destroyed.
And, if you point out that having a bunch of planes hijacked and replaced by Predator drones and the crew and passengers dumped over the Atlantic would seem to be a big enough conspiracy that somebody would have leaked something by now, if only to get a book deal, well, that just shows how cunning it is. Or that you’re in on it. There have always been conspiracies, of course, but today there’s only one, with the same relentless message: The bad guy is us, our government agents, our cabinet officials, our corporations. America is one unending director’s cut of The Usual Suspects, with Karl Rove as Keyser Sose. And yes, yes, I know Rove is supposed to have “left” the White House, but doesn’t that strike you as a bit convenient?
This sensibility is something worse than mere liberal bias. It corrodes reality itself. To the old question “Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”, a nation answers, “You’re right. My eyes must be lying.” For there is nothing so naïve as a reflexive cynic. So back we troop to that weary Bourne from which, apparently, we can never return. I saw a trailer for yet another movie the other day. Michael Douglas sneering, “Do you want to win the war on terror?” New film, same plot.
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Study: Media Elite's Campaign News More Biased than Talk Radio | NewsBusters.orgAccording to a new study, those news organizations that hold themselves up as the most neutral and professional — big newspapers, the broadcast networks and taxpayer-subsidized National Public Radio — are actually producing campaign stories that are the most tilted in favor of Democrats, while online news and talk radio have actually been the most balanced.
The study, released Monday from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, found newspapers and broadcast TV outlets devoted far more time to covering the Democratic candidates than the Republicans and that the tone of those stories was much more favorable to the Democrats, mirroring the results of a Media Research Center study released in August.
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Israeli artillery shelling kills two children in N GazaTwo Palestinian children were killed on Wednesday night during an Israeli army artillery shelling on northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, paramedics and witnesses said.
The witnesses said the two children tried to pull back a rocket launcher from an open area in the outskirts of the town, adding they suddenly heard a huge explosion in the area.
Witnesses said the shelling came shortly after Islamic Jihad(Holy War) militants launched three makeshift rockets from the area at southern Israel.
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