An Article by the New York Times 'Reporters say networks put wars on backburner' claims that it is harder than ever to get doverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on the air in the United States.
The article claims that "coverage of the war in Iraq has been massively scaled back this year...CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed."
Another article said: In January of 2009, Iraq accounted for only 1.25% of news stories in the US. Partly, news organisations are turning their focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. But even so, Afghanistan currently accounts for just 2% of news coverage. The economic crisis, by contrast, accounted for 47% of coverage two weeks ago, according to the most recent Pew report.
Chief foreign correspondent for CBS discusses American reluctance to hear about our troops and mission overseas.
Several months went by in 2008 without the sound of a bombing echoing through Baghdad. Somehow sadly, this trend, reflective of the decreased violent activity in Iraq, is reducing coverage.
A Pew Center Study showed that "the reduction in violence on the ground that began late last year has coincided with a significant decrease in coverage from the war zone as well." Anita McNaught, a correspondent for the Fox News Channel said “The violence itself is not the story anymore." John Hindertaker, writer of the Power Line blog, winner Time Magazine's Blog of the Year, says:
"One wonders, though, whether the change may be due in part to the fact that network executives are more excited about publicizing apparent failure in Iraq than success there."
The only reporting from Iraq in recent months has been about Iraqi elections and American troop redeployment or restructuring. Breaking news headlines of carbombings and suicide attacks have become a thing of the past.
After a peak of news coverage about the surge, with violence fading and Bush leaving, the interventions have become less important to American politics. New events, such as the fiancial meltdown, reccession, and 2008 presidential campaigns, have become more newsworthy for Americans and have displaced war coverage. In the first three months of 2008, coverage of the presidential campaigns was covered 11 times more on national television than the situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans now have more "important" things to fill their airtime with.
The blogosphere's response to the New York Times article and phenomenon either laments the tragedy or conspiracy of American media corporations. The tragedy or conspiracy is not that they have failed us, intentionally or not. The tragedy is that they conspire to capture as many restless eyeballs for as long as they can. Issue awareness A.D.D. of the American public means that our mission overseas, if not politically important (like during presidential election years), is boring to us.
Media companies do cater to us viewers, but they do have the power to shape what we become excited about.
http://www.journalism.org/node/10365
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