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May 11, 2007
Newsworthy. Or Not.
With a hat tip to Clayton Cramer, a not-so-hypothetical question. If 3 retired generals (out of several thousand) come out against the war, and if almost 3,000 active-duty military come out asking for full support and full funding and don't want to retreat, are both these items newsworthy?
If you said Yes to the first part and No to the second part, you too could work for CNN or just about any other mainstream media outlet. (Except Fox News, of course. They covered both news items.) As of this posting, two days after the presentation to Congress, CNN has no mention at all of the "Appeal for Courage". Were it not for blog coverage, this might well have been swept under the rug by a media for whom this doesn't fit the narrative.
As John Hinderaker notes at Power Line, this is sort of a lab experiment. And the media failed, as is their habit.
Click here for more details on this petition.
Posted by Doug at May 11, 2007 02:05 PM
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A question:
If 30,000 public school teachers came out in support of public education and 3 State Education superintendents came out critical of public education, which do you think is more newsworthy?
Posted by: Dan Trabue at May 11, 2007 02:54 PM
The state of public education, such as it is, is not the preeminent struggle facing Congress at this time. The War on Terror is. I would expect the media to cover both sides of this most important issue. Journalist journal, or at least that's what they're supposed to do. Instead, there's a overwhelming crowd of them that are against the war, and the coverage reflects that.
Your point is well-taken regarding a group of people in an occupation, or a group of people that generally have a consensus opinion, naturally coming out in favor of it said occupation or opinion. But when immigrants rally in favor of immigration, legal or otherwise, CNN is there, as they should be. And when funding of the troops is the biggest fight going on at Capitol Hill, they should be there, too, considering that around 300 Colonels and Lt. Colonel's are on the list. Nope, no Generals yet as far as the graphs go, but just below that.
Oh, and compare the coverage of 1 military mother who is anti-war, Cindy Sheehan, with the many, many other who speak out in favor of the mission. The Left lifts her up as some sort of Army mom icon, and the press just goes along with it.
Posted by: Doug Payton at May 11, 2007 07:06 PM