Reprint from Yesterday

This got a pretty strong response yesterday, not many comments, but several emails. (a little creepy because I don't publish my email) So I thought I'd reprint the section that brought the response because the weekday crowd is a little different from the weekend crowd.



Twelve US soldiers died in Iraq in a helicopter crash yesterday. Just horrible.

Do you think CNN is going to devote five days of coverage to this the way they did to that horrible mining tragedy, 12 dead in each? Interviews with the grieving relatives live on screen? Comments about all the previous mistakes at the employer that may have lead to the deaths? More or less, we're discussing two horrible industrial accidents, but they will not be treated the same.

This is the success of the Bush PR offensive surrounding "patriotism" and the offensive on the media. CNN, and the other cable channels, have been cowed into silence by the repeated assaults by the Bush administration. Somehow, the reporting of deaths has been made a political issue rather than a recounting of facts.

Look, the tragedy in West Virginia was significant and I'm not attempting to minimize it. I'm trying to point out the exploitation of those poor people's tragedy by the media by showing that they were singled out for that exploitation because their story was deemed politically "safe."

These are two extreme examples of a flaw in the the way these networks conduct themselves. In West Virginia, they wrung out every bit of emotion from the relatives that they could put on the screen, live, with no real care for whether it was in their best interests or not. Just get me the footage.

In Iraq, they are going to mention the deaths as the lead in a larger Iraq story that reports a lot of things, but largely ignore them because they don't want to be accused of being "political."

It's all so messed up.