Bias, Plain and Obvious
MRC intern Lyndsi Thomas helped tabulate all ABC, CBS and NBC evening news stories about Iraq since the beginning of 2007, just as the surge strategy was being implemented. After heavy coverage of the shift to a new Iraq policy in January and February 2007, the TV coverage began to closely track the rising and falling death rates for U.S. soldiers in Iraq. When the number of U.S. fatalities jumped in May, TV coverage jumped, too. When U.S. casualties began to steadily decline, TV coverage of Iraq dramatically decreased.
I’ve been saying for quite a while that the MSM has never had any interest in reporting much else but our abject failure in Iraq. That has been the narrative since nearly the beginning, starting even with the pessimistic stories when Saddam’s statue fell in Baghdad and it continues to this day.
I have wondered just how much of the negative polling numbers on Iraq were due to the overwhelmingly negative reporting the war has gotten from the MSM. Gvien that most people still get their news from the MSM, the constant drumbeat of negative stories have had to been a strong influence on those polls. And our news outlets know it. It’s shameful to see how the MSM has used their privileged position to influence public policy instead of simply report the news in as objectively a manner as possible. I do not lament the collapse of the newspaper industry nor the sharp decline in TV news ratings because, quite simply, the MSM has not proven itself to have been a good steward of the public trust for the past eight years. It has been partisan, biased, and at times outright dishonest.
I’m glad to see its bias pointed out in such stark terms by the MRC.
(via Ace)
Related posts:
- More Bias by the Numbers
- Public Opinion Up on Iraq as Negative MSM Stories Fall.
- Analyst Gets Pat on the Back for Stating the Obvious
- PA Governor Gets the Early Brush-Off Afer Scolding MSM All-Stars for their Obvious Bias
Category: Fighting the Islamists, Oh, THAT liberal media.
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All we can honestly conclude from this is that Fewer U.S. Dead = Less TV Coverage of Iraq.
What we cannot honestly conclude from this is that the network news shows are biased to the left. It didn't measure "positive" or "negative" tone.
I would guess that posts about Iraq in the conservative blogosphere has followed a similar trajectory, simply because there hasn't been as much action.
Whoop-dee-doo.
"While the amount of coverage has shriveled, the tone remains more negative than positive."
From the story at the link.
[...] increases are huge and I’m perfectly willing to attribute it to the fact that MSM coverage of Iraq has decreased while our successes have increased. I don’t know how we could expect the American people to [...]
[...] Media Research Council did this story two weeks ago and three months ago. I guess things have gotten so ridiculous at this point that even the [...]
[...] It’s not hard at all to map the media coverage in Iraq to the relative amount of success or failure our troops have experienced there. It’s not very [...]
It didn't measure tone.