Is the Press Missing Good News in Iraq?

Lawrence Kaplan in the New Republic asks whether the press is missing some of the good news in Iraq. Insurgent attacks are way down, and American casualties are at their lowest level in over a year. Yet, where are the press articles? Key quote:

The catch is, in touting Iraq's post-election successes, U.S. officials have been telling the truth. What worries me is that, unlike in Vietnam, where the press only broke with official policy after the Tet Offensive, the reverse may have happened in Iraq--that is, reporters have become so accustomed to bad news that they won't accept, and hence convey, good news for what it is. The result would be the same. As the late Peter Braestrup documents in his two-volume book on the subject, by the time the smoke had cleared from Tet and the good news had emerged that the Viet Cong had been defeated, no one was listening. Walter Cronkite had already declared the war a lost cause; The Wall Street Journal had already editorialized that Vietnam was "falling apart beneath our feet." When and if the smoke clears from the past two years, hopefully--despite all of the horror and dissembling that have characterized the war up until this point--the press will get it right.