quote:

Originally posted by josh4 That's speculation, it'd be just as easy to say the reverse.

How? Just take a look at the news. What percentage of it would be considered "good" news?

Hooks for the nightly news are almost always about some hidden danger or daily tragedy. When was the last time a news channel made a special graphic or theme music for a positive event? We see plenty of those for the "War on Terror," or "Turmoil in the Middle East," or "Lost Mountain Climbers."

The bottom line is fear, tragedy and death is "what sells." Winning a war doesn't fall into that category. Insurgents blowing up soldiers and people at a market does.

If you can tell me a reason why people would watch the news more if we were doing well in the Middle East, I'm all ears.

quote:

Originally posted by josh4 I find it hard to believe that the media is intentionally withholding positive progress in Iraq.

BHAHAHAHAHA!!

Sorry.
You seriously expect the media to report something positive in Iraq?
If everything is gong hunky-dory, they couldn't sell anything to us could they?

___________________
"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."

That gosh darn librul media, always makin' our dear leader look bad. Why does the media hate Bush?

Why does the media hate America?

Don't they know "freedom is not free"? Don't they know that Rummy and the boys sent our brave fighters over there to protect us over here?

Geez, I just can't take it anymore! I'm sick to death of this dang librulism just being so negative!

Don't you guys have ANYTHING positive to say about our situation there?

How 'bout them schools being built? Yes?

quote:

Iraq's schools, long touted by American officials as a success story in a land short on successes, increasingly are being caught in the crossfire of the country's escalating civil war. President Bush has routinely talked about the refurbishment and construction of schools as a neglected story of progress in Iraq. The U.S. Agency for International Development has spent about $100 million on Iraq's education system and cites the rehabilitation of 2,962 school buildings as a signal accomplishment. But today, across the country, campuses are being shuttered, students and teachers driven from their classrooms and parents left to worry that a generation of traumatized children will go without education. Teachers tell of students kidnapped on their way to school, mortar rounds landing on or near campuses and educators shot in front of children. This month insurgents distributed pamphlets at campuses, some sealed inside an envelope with an AK-47 bullet. ...No credible current national school attendance statistics exist in Iraq, whose education system was once considered a model in the Arab world. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...-home-headlines

Must have been modeled after our wonderful NCLB program implimented by the Hand of God from Texas Himself:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004...ain591676.shtml

Damn librul media! Next thing you know they'll be attacking those durn Christians and Christmas! Well I won't let 'em!

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Great post Opus.

___________________
I've never been able to eat a whole baby.
Kill the women. Eat the children.
It's just one of those days where you want to bend over everyone you know and kiss their ass goodbye with a big sideways boot.

Latest Mix

I didn't say a thing about political bias in the media. That goes both ways, if any way.

What I'm stating is that media outlets make more money by reporting the "dark" side of news events. There are a lot of good things that are noteworthy that happen each day both at home and even in *gasp* Iraq, we simply don't hear of them. Whether it's your local news or even the multinational news giants, they all know the same thing; death, destruction, misery and conflict gets peoples' attention.

We watch the news, the news channels want more viewers, so they report what gets our attention. They report all the death and destruction they can handle. Therefore, no matter what your political slant, you do tend to get more of the negative side of things then the positive. I don't think there is any political conspiracy when it comes to the reporting of the news. I do think that the dollar speaks louder than the hope of even-balanced news reporting.

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Damn librul media! Next thing you know they'll be attacking those durn Christians and Christmas! Well I won't let 'em!

The Simpsons have all lifes answers.

Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king.
That's why I did this: to protect you from yourselves. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a city to run.

quote:

Originally posted by NeoPhono I didn't say a thing about political bias in the media. That goes both ways, if any way. What I'm stating is that media outlets make more money by reporting the "dark" side of news events. There are a lot of good things that are noteworthy that happen each day both at home and even in *gasp* Iraq, we simply don't hear of them. Whether it's your local news or even the multinational news giants, they all know the same thing; death, destruction, misery and conflict gets peoples' attention. We watch the news, the news channels want more viewers, so they report what gets our attention. They report all the death and destruction they can handle. Therefore, no matter what your political slant, you do tend to get more of the negative side of things then the positive. I don't think there is any political conspiracy when it comes to the reporting of the news. I do think that the dollar speaks louder than the hope of even-balanced news reporting.

I understand your larger point and I couldn't agree more. I have a choice to watch two very contrasting 10:00 news shows - I could watch those either from Kansas City where they looooove reporting on fires and murders, or I could get the local Lawrence news where there's significantly less negativity (we're a freakin' college town - the worst that usually occurs is drunken college kids and hazing incidents mostly). The rest of the real world news I read online in various newspapers.

And granted, I also agree that this holds in a similar manner with the Iraq news, but to a point. I think what the tell-tale signs to me when things are bearing close to the news reports is when you hear it from the testimony of the Generals in charge. When they start mentioning phrases like "brink of civil war", and "we're not winning", or when members of the Republican party like Chuck Hagel admit how shitty things are going, or when various neoconservative pundits and leaders begin turning on each other and act as though they had nothing to do with this mess, or when the President himself mentions that we're not winning (and stubbornly throws in the "we're not losing" part too, admittedly), that's when my panties get all bunched up. Sadly, I'm almost a bit calloused to hearing the deaths of innocent lives and even our troops lives being lost, which in of itself kinda pisses me off. Maybe that's not the right word - it does still affect me quite a bit actually.

So I do agree with you, but I think the larger context of sensationalism only applies to Iraq to a point - things are quite fucking horrible there and I think we have every right to know exactly how horrible they are.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Look on the bright side, tommorrow some advisor will blow in the presidents ear and the windchimes in there will babble out something in broken english which roughly translates as being 'We're winning again!'
(I swear, hook up a generator to this guy spinning on his story and it would power a suburb. Mostly he just says 'um' a lot, its a sure sign that someone has no clue, that and god telling him to start it in the first place. )

quote:

Originally posted by Lilith Look on the bright side, tommorrow some advisor will blow in the presidents ear and the windchimes in there will babble out something in broken english which roughly translates as being 'We're winning again!' (I swear, hook up a generator to this guy spinning on his story and it would power a suburb. Mostly he just says 'um' a lot, its a sure sign that someone has no clue, that and god telling him to start it in the first place. )

Hey, as long as my news guy, PR guru, and no-nonsense Fox News poster boy Tony Snow says things are lovely, then I'm just happy as a clam in my little shell......

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Who is this traitorous librul that states such blasphemy?:

quote:

Most of the pessimistic warnings from the mainstream media have turned out to be right -- that the initial invasion would be the easy part, that seeming turning points (the capture of Saddam, the elections, the killing of Zarqawi) were illusory, that the country was dissolving into a civil war... The "good news" that conservatives have accused the media of not reporting has generally been pretty weak. The Iraqi elections were indeed major accomplishments. But the opening of schools and hospitals is not particularly newsworthy, at least not compared with American casualties and with sectarian attacks meant to bring Iraq down around everyone's heads in a full-scale civil war. An old conservative chestnut has it that only four of Iraq's 18 provinces are beset by violence. True, but those provinces include 40 percent of the population, as well as the capital city, where the battle over the country's future is being waged. In their distrust of the mainstream media, their defensiveness over President Bush and the war, and their understandable urge to buck up the nation's will, many conservatives lost touch with reality on Iraq. They thought that they were contributing to our success, but they were only helping to forestall a cold look at conditions there and the change in strategy and tactics that would be dictated by it. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/...he_medias_right

Why does Rich Lowry, the National Review Editor, hate America?

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Have the thought police paid you a visit yet?
You sound like youre about due for a bit of the republican whipping with a white feather in a punisment battallion to knock those filthy, hippy, unamerican thoughts out of your system and turn you into a proper, red blooded killer for the glory of the state against eastasia and for your own damn good.




I really should get to sleep.

And one last thing about how negative the news has been out of Iraq. It's fun as fuck for the 101st Keyboard Wingnut Brigade along with Laura Bush and friends to complain about the negativity of the news media on Iraq.

I guess it's another fucking thing to see those true journalists on the ground getting killed covering that gosh darn negative news stuff, 129 of them since 2003 and counting:

http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/Iraq/Iraq_danger.html

With 32 of those journalists dying in 2006 alone:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/natio...ist_Deaths.html

So to recap:

32: Number of journalists killed while covering the Iraq War in 2006 alone

15: Number of journalist support staffers killed in Iraq in 2006 alone

0: Number of chickenhawk rightwing bloggers killed while pissing and moaning about war coverage since the war began

(P.S. - this commentary of mine is not directly pointed at Neo's comments. It is, more or less, pointed towards the winger bloggers complaining about the negative coverage. More can be found here:
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200612190008)

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...