AP Explains Why It Will Ignore Iraq Now That News Is Better
An unbylined Associated Press report yesterday, at least as carried at MSNBC, acknowledges improvement, and then explains why it’s not going to get much future coverage from the wire service as long as things stay that way:
BAGHDAD – Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets.
Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest and skeptical of talk of success after so many years of unfounded optimism by the war’s supporters.
But is the public tuning out because they are “war-weary,” or are they tuning out because are so tired of hearing and seeing over-the-top negative stories? Significant levels of positive news have been lacking from Iraq for so many years that the likely expectation is that any news will be bad news.
Jim Taranto’s more succinct take at the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web is this:
Don’t expect to read any more about it (good Iraq news) from the AP. After all, you’re just not interested.
Once again, AP decides what the relatively disengaged will see based on its own set of priorities, which apparently do not include a responsibility to inform the public in a consistent matter.
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
Gosh, I would just like to know what stories unhelpful to the GOP major AP member news organizations are withholding this presidential election year.
Guess I’ll just have to wait until, oh, maybe the spring or summer ‘09 to find out. If there are some, I’m sure the news organizations involved will again, as they did in 2005, claim they didn’t want to affect the outcome of the election by providing information the public needed and deserved to have prior to voting — thereby affecting the outcome of the election in a big way.
Comment by S.W. Anderson — June 17, 2008 @ 11:43 pm
I’m curious, what is Reuters http://www.reuters.com/ and UPI http://www.upi.com/ stance on this? I seem to notice at times, these organizations are writing about the same subjects. How do they stack up on the bias issue?
Comment by dscott — June 18, 2008 @ 4:27 pm