Corner -
MORE DEATHS TODAY [Tim Graham]
As the news today typically leads with violence against Iraqis in Iraq, I'm reminded of the old liberal axiom (from I believe Herbert Gans) that one death in America has the newsworthiness of say, 2000 in Africa. I forget the exact math in the axiom, but the point was that it takes great casualty counts for the news media to get around to reporting from remote corners of the globe where it has no regular presence. But in Iraq, any car bomb that kills six is front-page news.
The subtle message that the media sends, intentionally or unintentionally, is that Iraq is a mess, and in maybe more of a reach, that if Bush hadn't acted there, these people would not be dead. It's definitely true that if Bush hadn't acted there, and Saddam remained, Iraqi deaths would probably not even make the papers most days. For our media, the discovery of mass graves in Iraq containing hundreds or thousands of dead were a one-day story, but the killing of four or six or 30 by insurgents is a front-page story every day. If Bush had lost to Kerry, it could have been suggested that one reason was the today's-mess nature of the press coverage. |
