Lacking Coverage on the War

In an article entitled "We're in War -- Where are the media?" from Common Dreams.org (a non-commercial website), journalist Joan Vennochi delves into how U.S. journalism has failed to portray how important the war in Iraq is. Her research is interesting and informative. She starts out by stating, “The real news of April played second fiddle to the presidential campaign, the pope’s visit to America, and the Texas polygamy case.” Vennochi’s statement reminded me of our News From Abroad readings, which lectured how our news has become entertainment and quite sensationalized since it is not only cheaper, but no one is complaining about it. It would be great to see an article like this smack in the middle of The Washington Post or NYT’s to show people that what they are reading is essentially cheap journalism.
Some of the interesting statistics Vennochi touched upon were:
• The death toll for the US military in Iraq hit 49 in April, making it the deadliest month since September, according to the Associated Press.
• “Around Iraq, at least 1,080 Iraqi civilians and security personnel were killed last month, an average of 36 a day, according to the AP tallies. While that’s down from March’s total of 1,269, or an average of 41 per day, those casualties certainly don’t add up to a stable Iraq.”
• “The latest statistics from the Project for Excellence in Journalism back up the conclusion that coverage of the Iraq war is on the decline.”
• “The Washington-based research organization studied roughly 1,300 stories from 48 news outlets during the month of April. The group’s analysis found that during that time frame, the top news story was the presidential campaign, which accounted for 33 percent of news coverage. The economy came in second, accounting for 6 percent. The pope’s visit accounted for 4 percent of the coverage, and the Texas polygamy case garnered another 4 percent.”
The article continues to go more in depth and give more examples of research done by Project for Excellence in Journalism. In order to see the article go to: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/04/8708/

It just makes one wonder…are journalist not interested in writing about the war anymore or are they just following what these huge corporate machines are telling them? Would we rather hear about Miley Cyrus posing disturbingly with her father or about how truly violent this war has become? Commercially run news outlets can’t handle the truth, which is why viewer as so misinformed.
The article also mirrors the research we looked at in class where Professor Keith showed us other statistics and lectured how there were so few images of injuries and death in the coverage of the Iraq war.

By Rachel Poloski