Via Instapundit, over at the Corner Stanley Kurtz points out another attempt by the press to bury the good news coming out of Iraq:
Today, on the front page of The Washington Post, we see the third in a three-part series on roadside bombs in Iraq. The stories in this series have been centered on the top half of the page and highlighted in red (a device I don’t recall seeing before). Next to that is a huge headline about allegations of killings In Iraq by Blackwater. Below that is a headline that reads “Most in Poll Want War Funding Cut.” Meanwhile deep inside the paper, on page A14, we find the following article: “U.S. and Civilian Deaths Decrease Sharply in Iraq: American Military Credits Troop Influx.” True, nestled between the other screaming headlines on page one, there is a brief minuscule teaser for this far more positive story about Iraq. Yet the bias here is clear. If the top story is Iraq, then I don’t see how you can put those three stories on the front page, while burying the other one on page 14. Arguably, an actual report of substantial positive progress in Iraq is more important, and more dramatic, than any of those other stories. By rights it ought to have been headlined on page one. The Post seems more interested in fighting our political battle over the Iraq than in reporting on it….
As I wrote over the weekend, I don’t see much to complain about in Rick Atkinson’s series on the battle against IEDs. In the history of the Iraq war, it is impossible to overstate the seriousness of the Pentagon’s failure to effectively respond to the IED threat. Still, the editors at the Post are, as Kurtz says, more interested in fighting political battles than reporting on real ones. Which is why the first piece in this series used a four year old quote for a headline: “‘The IED problem is getting out of control. We’ve got to stop the bleeding.’“
