Media at War

Thomas Sowell has a short editorial commentary today in RealClearPolitics which echoes something a Fox Commentator slung at Democratic Consultant Bob Beckel this afternoon. Julia Huddy, I believe, tweaked Bob for ignoring insurgents’ mistakes and losses.

The mainstream media has a sure-fire formula for rubbing the Bush Administration‘s face in the dirt and encouraging America’s enemies both at the same time.

Simply report extensively on every American casualty and Iraqi government mishap and ignore insurgent losses completely. Lord Haw-Haw employs the Exempt Media and their “passionate” stooges to put every shortcoming and eff-up the US makes under a microscope.

The insurgents and Al-Qaeda cruise effortlessly above this MSM obsession with bad news. And Tokyo Rose has a column in the NYT as she tries to hawk a book on why men are not necessary. The “Q” word is employed as often as possible by the Liberal Death Star and its satellites, WaPo and LAT.

Just last night I picked up a coffee table book named The Edwardians, hoping to find surcease from today’s cares by browsing through a long-gone era. But the book was written by noted Labour Party advocate J.B. Priestley and I read several pages on the Boer War that could be lifted from yesterday’s headlines.

King Edward was forced by the unpopularity of the Boer War to forego any trips abroad for almost two years, except to friendly confines like Portugal and Italy. Riots broke out in Birmingham and a man was killed outside a speech venue for the far-left agitator Lloyd George. [Can you imagine the martyrdom symbols carried by the moonbats were a demonstrator to be killed protesting the Iraq War?]

Vietnam was even more fraught with internal discord on the home front, and as Sowell notes, huge losses in the Civil War and WWII make today’s casualties miniscule in comparison.

Sowell points out the plangent interrogation of Rumsfeld, a man I do not admire, by PBS chief presentor, Jim Lehrer.

The Boston Globe somewhat surprisingly has a very deep and thoughtful piece which gives a broader perspective than I have in the paragraphs above. Michael Socolow of Maine University points out that

"too many journalists practice reporting informed by a pessimistic cynicism. This corrosive attitude is damaging the news industry; newspaper circulation and TV news viewership continue to decline."

The media will end up paying a price much more severe than declining subscriptions and viewership if the whack-job antiwar crazies continue to get the support of the MSM.

I predict a great interruption in the whine-intensity as the fumbling Bush game-plan reaches the next milestone tomorrow with the democratic polls in Iraq. That is an uplifting spectacle even Bush-haters can’t hide.

But unless Osama or Zarqawi are apprehended, the MSM will steadily and ceaselessly drum retreat and point out US faults. It’s the only way these nay-sayers can project their "corrosive cynicism" on the political stage. And these MSM outlets, like Hollyweird, will suffer losses in revenues to match their already precipitous decline in status.