The Liberal Media Dream

Mark Follman, Salon.com:

If anything, the violence is a potent sign that U.S. and new Iraqi government forces are still unable to get a grip on security, and that the post-Saddam brew of emboldened ethnic factions may well boil over into full-scale civil war. That's a message, of course, that Sunni and other Arab militants operating there would like to get across. Tierney argued earlier this week, to considerable fanfare, that a misguided press is helping them do so. (Perhaps as the new guy on the job he felt he had to make an impression. Peddling a flimsy and not terribly original idea, he did.) But if all the journalists suddenly packed up and went home, the picture of Iraq right now wouldn't look one iota different, at least not for those on the ground. Stateside, it might go from only marginally interrupting "Survivor" and "American Idol," to not interrupting them at all. It might give President Bush a little nudge up from the current quagmire of public disapproval on the war. But changing the channel isn't going to ensure next season's premiere of "Democracy Dawns in the Middle East" any more than it will help bring the men and women in uniform safely back home.

A newsflash for Tierney and all the others on the right eager to declare the media tangled up in its own "liberal bias," or just plain in cahoots with the insurgency: The story here isn't 100 television cameras aiding and abetting the militants. It's 100 years of acid history uncorked by a U.S. invasion. It's the Bush administration planning for the Iraqis to throw flowers -- not their own bodies strapped with explosives -- at their liberators' feet.

This is not empty rhetorical- it is a valid response to the "conservative" claim that the "liberal media over-reports the violence of Iraq, particularly since the immense flare-up following the election and formation of the new government. It is the same argument that came during the post-invasion flare-up in insurgency [which "caught everybody by surprise]:" that the media is adamant about obsessive reporting of the negatives while refusing to report the positive developments in Iraq.

So. There are plenty of positives in Iraq, but of course, the question must always be: postive for whom, exactly? The average Iraqi seems to be scratching out survival in a pretty tough world of turmoil.

Which, it goes without saying... We had a hand in creating.