Underreported News
What Wasn't Underreported?
Media Blog
Stephen Spruiell Reporting
07/17 04:01 AM
With the Valerie Plame leak investigation sucking up ink like a sponge, what didn’t go underreported last week? Here are a few stories I don’t think got enough coverage:
The Deficit: First, the U.S. budget deficit dropped by nearly 25 percent, irritating certain liberal pundits. The Seattle Times reported:
WASHINGTON — After three years of rising budget deficits, President Bush had some good news yesterday: Surging revenues and a steady economy have led to a steep drop in the expected deficit for this year.
This story was drowned in ink devoted to Karl Rove. Still, even during a normal news week this story wouldn’t get very much coverage — it disproves the conventional wisdom of most mainstream journalists that tax cuts, not runaway spending, got us into our current fiscal mess (this story in the Houston Chronicle, while unable to restrain from taking a swipe at the tax cuts, lays out the reasons we must cut spending to keep making progress). Also, it’s a story about numbers, which are unpopular unless they’re followed by “casualties”, “a new poll shows”, or “words in the State of the Union speech about yellowcake.”
Nuclear Terrorism: Who knows how reliable these reports are? (And some say they’re old news.) Regardless, they were enough to get Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) to request a briefing from the Justice Department:
WASHINGTON – Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a staunch critic of the federal government's lax immigration and border enforcement policies, said yesterday he would request a briefing from the Justice Department on information it has on plans revealed by WND this week for a nuclear attack on the U.S. by al-Qaida terrorists.
As I noted several weeks ago, a missing woman and a bunch of shark attacks were exactly what the media were focused on in the run-up to 9/11. I guess I expected news organizations to lose perspective but I didn’t think they’d be focused on the exact same things four years later. The inquiries of a member of Congress into a possible terrorist plot involving nuclear weapons should merit a mention in the mainstream press, but I couldn’t find anything.
Stockdale: Finally, on a positive note, Vice Adm. James Stockdale — who didn’t get a lot of press coverage upon his passing earlier this week — is starting to get the recognition he deserves after a memorial service held yesterday aboard the U.S.S. Reagan in Coronado, California. The AP reports:
Stockdale was to be buried with full honors July 23 at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
During the Vietnam War, he was a Navy fighter pilot based on the USS Oriskany and flew 201 missions before he was shot down on Sept. 9, 1965. The highest-ranking naval officer captured during the war, he aided other prisoners at Hoa Lo Prison, known as the "Hanoi Hilton."
Stockdale came to know Perot through his wife Sybil Stockdale's work establishing an organization on behalf of families of prisoners held during the war. He said he joined the presidential race to repay Perot for working to help free POWs in Vietnam.
"Jim Stockdale is a true American hero at a time when we really needed one," said retired Vice Adm. Edward H. Martin, who was imprisoned with Stockdale and attended the tribute. "He was a quiet hero but an incredibly effective one."
Stockdale retired from the military in 1979, one of the most highly decorated officers in U.S. Navy history, and became president of the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina. He left in 1981 to become a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
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