NEW YORK Going against the expressed wishes of the Pentagon, several top U.S. newspapers treated the tragic arrival of the 2,000th American military death in Iraq as a major milestone Wednesday. The New York Times even used that officially disapproved phrase in a headline at the top of a page. USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post all carried special features.
On Tuesday, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a military spokesman in Iraq, wrote in an e-mail to reporters, "The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives."
But on Wednesday, the Times ran a front-page story marking the 2,000th fatality -- plus four pages of photos of the dead inside. The gallery covered every death since the paper last performed this service, at the 1,000 mark in early September 2004.
The Page One headline reads: "2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, a Grim Mark." On its Web site, meanwhile, the paper carried the entire gallery of the dead, plus extensive breakdowns by age, date, state, and other markers. Clicking on the photo produces background on each fatality.
I've said it before: The media's anti-war bias is not so much founded in a moral or fiscal opposition to the war in Iraq but rather an overwhelming desire to sell lots and lots of newspapers, whatever the cost to our foreign policy and our troops.
Newsweek could care less about the riots, death and danger to our troops that results from running trumped-up stories about flushing Korans down the toilet. As long as it sells them lots of magazines, they're fine with stretching the truth and sensationalizing unverified information from anonymous sources.
Personally, I think there's an anti-war political agenda mixed in the equation somewhere as well, but rest assured that the bottom line is nothing but "dollars and cents." If stories about building schools and rescuing people from oppression could sell more copy than dismal, gloomy stories of American defeat glorifying the death of our troops then things would probably be a bit different.
But they don't, so things aren't.
You can read more from Rob Port at SayAnythingBlog.com
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Comments: 3
More reporting of good news would break this cycle.
Of course the Pentagon would attempt to discourage the media from marking the 2,000th death in Iraq. But the press has a responsibility, both to the public and to the troops, to provide as full an accounting of the war as possible.