Soccer Dad

We don't make news, we only report it

One of those annoying things about the media, is the way they claim "We don't make the news, we only report it." A few items I saw today give lie to that claim.

Because there is limited time to report and limited space to print on, editorial judgments are made all the time. Choosing what stories and what aspects of stories to report are subjective opinions. Even if everything reported was objective (an unlikely possibility), the choices made in deciding what to report will skew the report.

Amir Taheri recently returned to Iraq and reported what he saw in "The Real Iraq" in Commentary

The first sign is refugees. When things have been truly desperate in Iraq—in 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990—long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape. In 1973, for example, when Saddam Hussein decided to expel all those whose ancestors had not been Ottoman citizens before Iraq’s creation as a state, some 1.2 million Iraqis left their homes in the space of just six weeks. This was not the temporary exile of a small group of middle-class professionals and intellectuals, which is a common enough phenomenon in most Arab countries. Rather, it was a departure en masse, affecting people both in small villages and in big cities, and it was a scene regularly repeated under Saddam Hussein.

Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television sets—and we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark. Many of the camps set up for fleeing Iraqis in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia since 1959 have now closed down. The oldest such center, at Ashrafiayh in southwest Iran, was formally shut when its last Iraqi guests returned home in 2004.

This is an indication of some of the success of the Iraq war. Iraqis are returning home. Despite what is reported, people who apparently hear what is going on inside the country from friends and relatives feel safe enough to return.

Two questions: Would this information change the way some Americans feel about the war and its success? Now that this information is out there, will we see articles in the NY Times, Washington Post or hear items on CBS news about the returnees?

With all of the reporting of diplomacy and war with Iran, the media has been silent on the ferment going on in Iran itself. PostWatchBlog wants to know why the action is ignored by the Washington Post. And from him we see that Gateway Pundit has been covering the anti-Government violence for quite a while.

Critical Mastiff highly recommends the Belmont Club's coverage of the media's non-coverage of the events in Iran.

The Belmont Club, in turn, recommends Deja Vu who observes

So anxious is the media elite to ensure that the US will take the appeasement route that it seeks to convince its readers that Iranian domestic unrest is not only hopeless but would be counter productive.

The Belmont Club compares the media inattention to the rebellions in Iran to the NY Times' shameful hiding of the famine that Stalin imposed on the Ukraine. Without offering specifics he outlines what we need

What's needed is a way to reform our organs of sight and escape from a world where practically every terrorist attack is prefaced with a denial that a particular community is a threat; or that taxes can be cut and spending upped without consequences. What's needed is some way out of the maze of lies, not to get at the liars, because liars never pay the price, but to get away from the lie.

Compared to Iran and Iraq, how the President is covered is small potatoes, but nonetheless NRO's media blog picks up on something Elizabeth Bumiller, outgoing White House correspondent for the NY Times, writes in her valedictory

Media critics have devoted countless words to how "he said, she said" journalism often results in the public learning little more than the spin of both sides, with scant attention paid to the actual substance of the policy in question. Especially in this case, the advantage goes to the side that's spinning against the White House, because as Bumiller writes, she often "worked the phones in concentric circles inward, from members of Congress who were mad at the president, to put-upon State Department officials, to those ubiquitous 'Republicans close to the White House.'" In other words, the administration's opponents in Congress often drove the story selection, with its supporters playing defense.

(Could Maryland's hostile politics also be media driven?)

Unlike the cases of Iraq and Iran where the bias comes from a lack of reporting, this kind of political reporting is agenda driven. It is the agenda of the President's opponents that drives this kind of coverage.

In all three cases we see ways how media can be biased - both by comission and by omission.

It's time that the media took a good look at itself. It is not serving the public's best interests.

Technorati tags: Media Bias.

Posted by SoccerDad at June 7, 2006 3:58 AM | TrackBack