Corporate television is having a near total news blackout on Iraq and Afghanistan. Reporters covering the wars have gone on record saying the networks have put war on the back burner, according to the NY Times.
For example, take Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. She joked with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that she has to threaten to kill her bureau chief with an armor-piercing RPG in order to get her stories on the air. Sure, she was joking, but was she?
"If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts," Ms. Logan said.
How little coverage of our nation's wars appear on the three network evening newscasts?
Only 2 minutes per week.
The NY Times reports:
According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been "massively scaled back this year." Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The "CBS Evening News" has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s "World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News." (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)
There are about 150,000 American soldiers deployed in Iraq, but yet CBS News, for example, "no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq".
Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television "with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad."
The war and occupation of Iraq has been a huge drain on our nation's military preparedness, huge drain on our nation's men and women in the armed forces, huge drain on our nation's treasury, and a huge drain on the Republican majority in Congress, but it no longer is worthy of more than 2 minutes of news coverage per week by corporate network news.
It would almost appear that corporate television media is conspiring to make Iraq a non-issue in this year's elections. Even if misleading, happy talk editorials like "The Iraqi Upturn" from the Washington Post are to be believed, wouldn't corporate television want to spread the Good News from Iraq™?
Are events like these no longer even news worthy to corporate television?
The Washington Post reports Four Americans were killed in Baghdad blast. At about 9:20 a.m., an explosion rocked government building in Sadr city. Two U.S. soldiers and two American civilians working for the U.S. State department were killed in the blast.
"At least one Iraqi was killed in the explosion. Wire service reports said as many as six Iraqis died. One U.S. soldier and three Sadr City district advisory council members also were wounded in the attack, the U.S. military said."
The LA Times reports this attack was "the second aimed at a political meeting in two days". According to the McClatchy Newspapers story, the explosion was caused by a bomb hidden in a meeting room and that an Italian working for the U.S. Defense Department was also killed in the blast. Plus, "in another attack, at least 90 civilians were wounded in Mosul when a car bomb exploded outside a coffee shop".
Or, that today a little more is now known about the attack earlier in the week that killed two U.S. soldiers near Baghdad. According to the LA Times, "A gunman ambushed the soldiers and their interpreter, who was wounded in the exchange, as they left the Madaen municipal building".
The Interior Ministry in Baghdad identified the gunman as a local official and said he emerged from the building with the Americans, pulled a Kalashnikov assault rifle from the trunk of his car and sprayed them with bullets. The man's colleagues sought cover as the Americans returned fire and killed him, according to the ministry, which oversees the police.
But witnesses said the assailant was a former council member who joined the Sunni Muslim insurgency after he was ousted from his job in sectarian fighting in 2006.
"He was sitting in his vehicle right in front of the municipal headquarters and opened fire with a Kalashnikov on the Americans as they were leaving the building," said the owner of a nearby farm equipment store, who asked to be identified by a traditional nickname, Abu Ali. "Other Americans immediately opened fire on [the man] in his car, and he was killed instantly."
Or that elsewhere in Iraq, violence continues according to the LA Times.
"At least 15 people were killed and 40 injured Sunday when a woman blew herself up at the civic center in Baqubah, Diyala's capital, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Hours later, a volley of mortar fire slammed into a checkpoint manned by Sunni Arab tribesmen hired by the U.S. military to guard their areas against militants. Police said at least 10 people were killed and 24 injured in that attack, which took place north of Baqubah."
Terry McCarthy, an ABC News correspondent believes a "decline in the relative amount of violence 'is taking the urgency out" of some of the coverage' from Iraq. But then, CBS's "Friedman said coverage of Iraq is enormously expensive, mostly due to the security risks." But from the newspapers coverage and CBS's own admission, Iraq is still a dangerous place.
But even danger and the cost of reporting are not a valid excuses. There is still a lot of news coming concerning Iraq that isn't coming from Iraq that should be reported on the nightly news.
For example, today The Guardian reports GAO disputes claims from Pentagon report on Iraq.
Baghdad has made scant progress toward self-sufficiency and the Bush administration has no workable strategy to achieve that goal, US government auditors said yesterday.
The audit released by the independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) painted a starkly different picture of the war than another report issued yesterday by the Pentagon...
The GAO appeared to take a dim view of the administration's top-secret Joint Campaign Plan (JCP) ... The JCP "is not a strategic plan; it is an operational plan with limitations," the government auditors concluded.
The LA Times adds "the Government Accountability Office... concluded that many political reconciliation efforts have stalled, that Iraq's security forces remain largely unable to operate without U.S. assistance and that its central government has not fulfilled commitments to spend its own money on reconstruction. As a result, a new U.S. strategy for attaining military, political and economic goals is needed, the GAO said."
"More broadly, the GAO said the Bush administration has not planned adequately for the drawdown of troops sent for last year's buildup. Most of the additional forces are expected to leave Iraq by the end of July."
How dangerous is it for the television news people to read and report on a GAO report? Will it be on tonight's nightly news?
Of course, the blame for news blackout of our country's wars doesn't soley fall on corporate television news. The Bush administration refuses to allow coverage of our nation's dead soldiers returning from war. The Los Angeles Times reports, In Afghanistan, U.S. forces honor dead with quiet ceremony.
The word went out across the flight line: "Ramp ceremony!"
Two "angels," the remains of a U.S. Marine and his Afghan interpreter, were about to be loaded onto a cargo plane Friday night. Four dozen soldiers and Marines quickly lined the runway to pay a final, poignant tribute to the dead.
Ramp ceremonies have been painfully common in Afghanistan this spring. Roadside bombs are killing U.S. and coalition service members at a high rate, leading to many solemn plane-side tributes.
The events are reverential, dignified and almost majestic in their stark simplicity. But the Pentagon refuses to allow the news media to cover or photograph them, thus denying the American public a look at an enduring military ritual.
Despite the lack of pictures and minutes on the nightly television news, the United States is still fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of troops are deployed in conflict areas. Thousands of American families are praying for and worrying about their loved ones.
Each night, I and the other editors and commenters of the Overnight News Digest will continue to try to find news about America's fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. I believe we deserve better than 2 minutes of news per week about our country's wars and occupations.