Iraq War Snoozefest Bores Journalists
Yes yes, the War in Iraq is now five years old and has reached 4,000 American deaths . There's no real plan for reconciliation between the government and the insurgents and various Terrorists, so it's pretty much stalled forever. In other words, Iraq is super boring and not of interest to anyone. The media knows this, too! According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, "Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer." Well maybe if anything *cool* were going on over there, like COWBOYS/INJUNS or COUPS or PASSIONATE SEX or SPACE LASER FIGHTS, they might cover it more.
Another obvious reason for this declining news share has been the presidential election, where coverage of the candidates' various words placed out of context and ambiguous adjective selections has demanded the Main Stream Media's full attention. Also, the draft -- sadly enough, young people can only care so much.
Anti-war and pro-war activists alike have their various reasons to be upset over this decline, but the real victims here are a single, unique breed: self-proclaimed liberal pundits who were hawkish about the war, then pretended they hated the war when it went bad, then made up BS evidence about how it's turning around, or whatever other popular news trends there have been on Iraq that they are always available to comment on:
"I was getting on average three to five calls a day for interviews about the war" in the first years, said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow on national security at the Brookings Institution. "Now it's less than one a day."
Someone save Michael O'Hanlon! He has more embarrassing things to say about Iraq but no one will listen!