The Iraq news blackout: how the press spent its summer vacation

[EV_Ares]

News that Katie Couric would anchor the CBS Evening News from Baghdad this week created a major media splash. After earlier suggesting that type of assignment would be too treacherous for a single mother of two, Couric did an about-face. She stressed that as a journalist she wanted to get a better sense, a firsthand account, of how events were unfolding inside Iraq; to give the story more context.

It's ironic because if CBS had simply aired more reporting from Iraq this summer instead of joining so many other news outlets in walking away from the story, then perhaps Couric wouldn't have had to travel 8,000 miles to find out the facts on the ground.

Couric's high-profile assignment helps underscore the shocking disconnect that has opened up between American news consumers and the mainstream media. The chasm revolves around the fact that public polling indicates consumers are starved for news from Iraq, yet over the summer the mainstream media, and particularly television outlets such as CBS, steadfastly refused to deliver it. The press has walked away from what most Americans claim is the day's most important ongoing news event.

The media's coverage from Iraq has naturally ebbed and flowed over the four-and-a-half years since the invasion. And escalating security concerns in Iraq have made it both more difficult and more expensive for news organization to operate there.

But the pullback we've seen this summer, the chronic dearth of on-the-ground reporting, likely marks a new low of the entire campaign. It's gotten to the point where even monstrous acts of destruction cannot wake the press from its self-induced slumber. Just recall the events of August 14.

That's when witnesses to the four synchronized suicide truck bombs that detonated in northern Iraq on that day described the collective devastation unleashed to being like an earthquake, or even the site of a nuclear bomb explosion; the destruction of one bomb site measured half a mile wide. A U.S. Army spokesman, after surveying the mass carnage from an attack that targeted Yazidis, an ancient religious community, called the event genocidal. Indeed, more than 500 Iraqis were killed, more than 1,500 were wounded, and 400 buildings were destroyed.

Instead of Iraq, here are some of the news stories Nightline staffers devoted time and energy to during that seven-week summer span:

The popularity of organic pet food.
The favorite songs of Pete Wentz, bassist for the pop/rock band Fall Out Boy.
The folding of supermarket tabloid, The Weekly World News.
The rise of urban McMansions.
The death of the postcard.
The commercial battle between Barbie and Bratz dolls.
The nerd stars of the movie Superbad.

In other words, week after week a clear plurality of Americans said the situation in Iraq was a story they followed very closely. Yet week after the week much of the mainstream press responded with a so-what shoulder shrug.

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http://mediamatters.org/columns/200709050002