Was a surreal experience.
It looks like the US media has given up on the war in Iraq, and isn't all that interested in Afghanistan.
This weekend in Baghdad the Shia celebrated the death of Imam Moussa ibn Jaafar al-Kadhim, a man revered as one of the Shiite saints. The security for this event has been planned for over half a year. Cars were not allowed on city streets for 3 days, the city was locked down, and still 20 were killed and hundreds injured.
For Baghdad this was a calm weekend, but in Iraq there was other violence of note, but the news networks mostly ignored it.
A little further east large scale conflicts are still being fought. More members of the NATO force have been killed and injured, and it is clear that the Taliban are still a factor that can not be ignored, but the networks didn't have much time for Afghanistan either.
When watching CNN or other televised news media, these were not the stories of the weekend.
The clear leader in media focus was the Ramsey case, a ten year old murder. While this is a personal tragedy for the family, it is not now, nor has it ever been a national news story.
The number two story of the weekend has to be Israel. While Israel's violation of the cease fire Saturday night was news worthy, the twittering about the state of the cease fire started long before Israel's Saturday night attack.
The priority of these reports appear completely reversed. The stories that directly involve American troops or nations that are under our control are ignored. In their place they are busy rehashing a family tragedy that is a decade old.
My only guess is that for CNN and the rest of our TV media, the constant downward grind that the wars in Southwest Asia represent are ratings crushers. So they opt to focus the national news on a huge non story. The sad reality is I suspect that a majority of people are more interested in the Ramsey case, and don't even care much about Iraq any more.
Tags
Ramsey Iraq Israel Lebanon Afghanistan
3 comments:
You seem to underestimate some key issues. Are you aware that she was in BEAUTY PAGEANTS???
I don't think so... newsgroups don't get instantaneous ratings but they do work off of what they believe will sell more and that is always sex and violence... I just wish they'd go ahead and call it the Standard Oil News Hour so at least there would be SOME financial disclosure.
You should watch less T.V. and do some more reading.
I've noticed lots of Iraq coverage locally in the Columbia City Paper, alough I haven't seen it in recent weeks.
They have a reporter there and I think thats pretty cool for a little paper in this area especially considering the national news doen't report enough on it.
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