War news: Now what?
The Iraq war hasn't appeared on our front pages very often in the past year. I've addressed the reasoning many times before, including as recently as last month. Boiled down: Between television and the Internet, there is plenty of coverage of the war. Given our deadlines, our Baghdad coverage is often outpaced by morning TV. Can we add anything? No, so let's emphasize local news.
Now comes Eric Boehlert's Media Matters piece arguing that television is NOT covering the war. (Via Romenesko.)
There is, however, ample evidence that the American media, on the eve of the crucial midterm elections, have lost interest in the chaotic saga, with network news coverage in recent weeks plummeting and Page One newspaper dispatches from Iraq growing sparse. The media fade has come at a perfect time for the White House as it attempts to shift voters' attention away from Iraq and move it over to the war on terror.
And:
Television news interest in Iraq has been on a steady decline for years but has recently accelerated dramatically. In 2003, the ABC, NBC, and CBS nightly newscasts, on average, devoted 388 minutes each month to covering Iraq, according to Tyndall's numbers. By 2005, that monthly tally had decreased by more than 50 percent -- to 166 minutes each month. Today, unless there is a dramatic, late-September surge in coverage, the Big Three nightly newscasts will end the month having devoted a total of 40 minutes to Iraq, or less than 15 percent of their airtime.
Iraq hasn't been the networks' top nightly news story since the Monday-to-Friday week of June 26-30.
He also lists selected newspapers' Page One coverage for the Sept. 1-21 period. Other than The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Iraq stories on the front pages of the papers were in the single digits.
We've published four Iraq war stories on A1 in that time period. We've also published two promos to inside stories in our Quick Read section of the front page. (Stories have run inside the paper virtually every day.) The political ramifications of our lack of A1 coverage as described by Boehlert hadn't occurred to me, but I admit that it amuses me to imagine that some readers may think it's because we're just following the Bush administration's playbook.
So, now what? Do we bring the Iraq war reports back to the front page? I'm not inclined to. As we try to emphasize local news, stories of war -- except for those like this on Friday -- don't fit that strategy.
Do you want to see more Iraq coverage on the front page?
Comments (8)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
John, if you shift policy now before the election, it will look like bias. It's also noteworthy that Media Matters is a left wing organization, hardly an unbiased source from which you should take a cue.
Posted on September 27, 2006 7:07 PM
In the minds of some people, any person or organization that points out the truth is immediately suspect and "left wing." And Media Matters is far from "left wing;" it was formed by a recovering right-winger who, after years of hounding the Clintons (for whom I could care less, FWIW) on charges later proved baseless (but only after a $60MM witch-hunt), came to his senses.
Reporting news isn't "bias." Bias is what has crawled its ugly way into the mainstream TELEVISION media ever since Ronnie RayGun killed the Fairness Doctrine twenty years ago, and it is a right-wing bias.
John, you guys do a great job reporting news objectively and will continue doing so, no doubt. And local news *IS* the proper focus for a newspaper in a market this size, IMHO.
Keep it up.
Best regards,
Posted on September 27, 2006 7:49 PM
Whatever you do, don't run any stupid "analysis" or "think" pieces about the war.
Newspapers too often cede the daily news to TV and internet and instead think they can provide the "depth" behind the story or "get ahead" of it by "advancing" the story.
Well, those sound great -- except they invariably lead to articles that are anything but objective (I'm still waiting on the impending Iraqi civil war -- that "forward thinking" newspapers predicted two years ago..)
At any rate, if I want to read an editorial about the Iraq war, I'll turn to your editorial pages. Just don't put them on the front page.
Posted on September 27, 2006 10:08 PM
Oh, and by the way, no response needed (as if!)
Posted on September 27, 2006 10:09 PM
From Media Matters website:
"Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation — news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda — every day, in real time."
So they are only out to stop the "conservative agenda" by their own words, but they aren't liberal? C'mon Tony, give me a break. Not only do they admit to being liberal with the above statement, my own experience with them shows that they are selective with the facts in many of their presentations.
Posted on September 28, 2006 12:09 PM
i was on the team that redesigned the media matters web site last fall. it's a fine they tow, especially because of what sam points out.
they do only focus on conservative misinformation, so they are biased in that regard, but... the charge that they're a smear site (by o'reilly and the ilk) is completely overblown. IMHO, they do sometimes focus on the innane, but all of their analysis is based on what people, programs, papers and networks either did or didn't say.
Posted on September 29, 2006 3:25 AM
The conservative agenda or conservative misinformation? Oh, yeah, that's the same thing...
:-)
Have a great weekend!
Posted on September 29, 2006 8:45 AM
Since it is precisely because of the abuse and misinformation that Media Matters monitors and calls out that the word 'liberal' has in the (small and disfunctional) minds of some Americans become synonymous with 'coward' and 'traitor,' it is yet again time to define some terms. From Webster's:
Liberal:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberal
Conservative:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conservative
Oh, I forgot, the dictionary is a "liberal conspiracy."
:-D
Have a REALLY great weekend!
Posted on September 29, 2006 8:52 AM