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February 09, 2004 The role of the war in the media... RantingProfs posts an interesting email from a Public Affairs Officer in Baghdad, who comments on distortions created, and passed on, by the media. This bit in particular caught my attention.... The Fox News crew laid out what qualified as "newsworthy: -- Women taking an active leadership role in the new government, detainee/prisoner abuse cases, any WMD news, and individual soldier contributions (such as one soldier who bought school supplies and teddy bears for Iraqis out of his own pocket.)Note that this isn't evidence of "right wing bias" on the part of Foxnews. None of the four stories they wanted were indicative of any sort of right wing bias. No, what the Foxnews crew apparently had was a serious case of the "tabloids" - that tendency to only report news that makes a splash. And, as the officer reports, that illness was not limited to FoxNews. That, it seems to me, is why we see more bad news than good news in the media. It's the same reason your local news contains so much bad news. When things are mostly good, good news isn't news. It doesn't stand out. And besides....the millions of little successes making this Iraq thing work...they're mostly boring. Who wants to cover the reconstruction of a schoolhouse? It's not news. When it's just one of thousands, it's not news....it's a statistic. On the other hand, when a mortar lands in Baghdad, it's news...precisely because it's the exception. I suppose, in a strange way, we should be comforted that we do hear the bad news. It means the good news is just too common to report. |