May 26, 2008

Maybe if they wore suits of iron and could fly...*

As John Harris at Politico parses the reasons why the media went apeshit over Hillary Clinton's reference to the assassination of RFK, David Carr at the New York Times laments the sharp drop in coverage of the war in Iraq:

Television network news coverage in particular has gone off a cliff. Citing numbers provided by a consultant, Andrew Tyndall, the Associated Press reported that in the months after September when Gen. David H. Petraeus testified before Congress about the surge, collective coverage dropped to four minutes a week from 30 minutes a week at the height of coverage, in September 2007.

When you're hunting for ratings or hits, you're going to go with what attracts eyeballs. War just isn't as popular as it used to be.

*Some other things to think about this Memorial Day:

Fourth vet dies from PTSD drug cocktail.

Profiles of California's dead.

What's a human life worth anyway?

The politics of warriors.

2 comments:

Shintzer@hotmail.com said...

I did a doubletake when I saw the Hillary/RFK story on the front page of the Times. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought it was freaky.

Anonymous said...

re: dip in war-coverage ratings.

My hunch is that a significant Number of viewers simply no longer believe the news is at all true or relevant. It's the Dick Cheney "Yeah, so?" reaction.