MSM ignore progress in Iraq...

We've blogged earlier on Michael Fumento's trip to Iraq. Here's another piece on the coverage of Iraq in the Mainstream Media.

Editorial page associate editor Mark Yost at the Knight-Ridder newspaper the St. Paul Pioneer Press committed a major boo-boo. He penned a provocative column on media coverage of the Iraq war, observing that from what his contacts there told him – with apologies to Johnny Mercer – the mainstream media are accentuating the negative and ignoring the positive.

Yost couldn’t have imagined he was bathing in blood and throwing himself into the shark pen. His media colleagues were merciless. “With your column, you have spat on the copy of the brave men and women who are doing their best in terrible conditions,” reporter Chuck Laszewski at the same newspaper charged in an open letter. “You have insulted them and demeaned them,” he wrote. “I am embarrassed to call you my colleague.”

Knight-Ridder D.C. Bureau Chief Clark Hoyt devoted a column to a Yost roast, taking time out only to slam U.S. progress in Iraq. To read it is to know exactly why so many Americans believe we can’t trust the media to fairly cover the war.

OF COURSE the war coverage is slanted: The adage "If it bleeds it leads" doesn’t halt at the Iraqi border. That's why when two small shells land in a barren section of city the size of Boston CNN.com blares: "Blasts rock Baghdad near coalition headquarters" whereas the completion of an electrification program or water main gets not a column inch.