Whistling in the Dark

Chart Source: http://www.robertsilvey.com/notes/impeachment/index.html




Eric Boehlert reports to us what's not being reported:








News consumers remained starved for reports from Iraq
The media's dramatic news withdrawal from Iraq might be justified, on some level, if evidence showed that Americans had grown bored of the war in Iraq. Journalism is a public service but it's also a business and editors and producers are always trying to find the right mix of news that consumers need and news they want to have. If Americans were zoning out on Iraq, then why should news outlets try to force-feed updates to news consumers?
But the truth is Americans are borderline obsessed with news from Iraq. And it's the

mainstream media that's abdicated their news gathering responsibility.

That stunning disconnect becomes obvious when comparing the PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index with the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press' weekly News Interest Index, a survey "aimed at gauging the public's interest in and reaction to major news events." Pew asks 1,000 adults which story in the news they are following "very closely" that week. The two weekly surveys simultaneously gage which stories news consumers are paying very close attention to and which stories news editors and producers are paying close attention to (i.e. which stories they're covering).

As I mentioned, the disconnect is absolutely shocking when it comes to the situation in Iraq, which as a news story consistently ranked near the top of the News Interest Index this summer, while simultaneously ranking near the bottom of the News Coverage Index.
For instance, at the outset of the summer for the work week of June 24-29, 32 percent of adults were following the situation in Iraq "very closely," but the story represented only 4 percent of that week's news hole -- a 28-point gap. That same trend played out all summer, with that gap often ballooning:

% following situation in Iraq "very closely"
% of national news hole devoted to Iraq war
% Gap
July 1-6
36
3
33
July 8-13
25
4
21
July 15-20
28
6
22
July 22-27
28
3
25
July 29-August 3
29
5
24
August 5-10
36
5
31
August 12-17
33
5
28
August 19-24
34
5
29
On average during the summer, 31 percent paid very close attention to the situation in Iraq, making it far and away the hottest news topic throughout the season. Yet on average, the situation in Iraq represented just 4.5 percent of the overall news coverage. No other story, as tracked by the News Interest Index and the News Coverage Index, produced such a consistently wide disparity between June and September.
In other words, week after week a clear plurality of Americans said the situation in Iraq was a story they followed very closely. Yet week after the week much of the mainstream press responded with a so-what shoulder shrug.

And nobody was shrugging their shoulders more often than television news producers, who all but gave up covering the war in Iraq this summer. For the week of August 5-10, for instance, when news consumer interest in Iraq peaked at 36 percent, the story didn't even represent 3 percent of cable television's news hole.

So what's the deal here? I think actually its both less political and more shameful than many media observers imagine. A strong argument can certainly be made that the MSM is doing the Bushies' bidding by trying desperately to minimize the bad news from Iraq. Certainly, some in the media are merely serving as bullhorns for administration cheerleaders like Ari Fleischer.

Yet the problem is far larger than the familiar tale of partisan hacks like O'Reilly twisting the facts. It appears the MSM's corporate ownership is mostly concerned with protecting their future chances of sucking up to the powerful. Thus, by barely covering Iraq they won't give unforgivable offense to a future Democratic government through manufacturing loads of misinformation to bolster the war's proponents. On the other hand, should the Republicans hang on to power against all odds, the media won't be "guilty" of disheartening the American people by fully revealing the unvarnished truth. The whole thing reeks of "cop-out," as we used to say back in the day.