LAT: TV Reporters Decry Drop in Iraq Coverage: Sense growing apathy

[DeepModem Mom]

TV Reporters Decry Drop in Iraq Coverage
The deaths of two CBS crew members have put the war back at the top of prime-time news, but journalists say they sense a growing apathy.
By James Rainey, Times Staff Writer
June 3, 2006

News of the bombing that felled a CBS news crew washed over Baghdad's tight-knit press corps like a tempest this week — evoking waves of anxiety, sadness, resolve and more than a little dismay.

American television journalists covering Iraq confronted the difficult reality that it took the deaths of a cameraman and soundman and critical injuries to correspondent Kimberly Dozier to help push Iraq back to the forefront of the nightly news back home.

By the end of April, the amount of time devoted to Iraq on the weeknight newscasts of the three major television networks had dropped nearly 60% from 2003, according to the independent Tyndall Report tracking service.

Even before Monday's attack in a relatively placid section of Baghdad, some network television correspondents had reached the unsettling conclusion that, even as they were risking their lives in the war zone, audiences and producers in America had grown weary of much of the coverage from Iraq.

ABC correspondent John Berman in Baghdad wrote in his blog recently that he and his colleagues felt like the castaways on the network's prime-time drama "Lost" — "We have come to the conclusion that no one knows we are here."...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraqtv3jun03,0,6849487.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Benhurst]

1. It's the reporters' own fault.

If they would prodouce more "good news" stories, they would get more coverage.

BushAmericans like to be on the winning side. We are, after all, The World's Only Supperpower. Team America! Number One!

If the correspondents get with the message, their stories will get air time, big time.

[PSPS]

2. It's easy to explain what they perceive as "apathy."

For me, at least, it isn't "apathy." It's fatigue at the spin and their stenographic "reports." They could do as much simply by reprinting white house handouts and never bother going to Iraq in the first place. The whole idea of being "embedded" is a joke.

And this big deal being made out of a reporter being injured, and the crew being killed, is bothersome. It's too bad, of course. But the idea of news people being part of the story is bothersome to me.

If news in general would be something that dealt with the serious issues surrounding the war instead of being an "embedded" tool for propaganda, I would pay attention. But if I want to sit around and listen to spin and lies, I'd listen to my alcoholic brother spin another yarn about why he couldn't make it to a family gathering.

[depakid]

8. "...fatigue at the spin."

American "news" has pretty much lost its credibility- and a lot of people have simply tuned it out.

Like you said- if I wanted to listen to lies and spin.... there are plenty of other options for that.

[Lexingtonian]

3. it's public depression

Ye Olde Kubler-Ross stages in effect in watching the loss in Iraq.

There's classical Denial (Mission Accomplished 2003), Bargaining (2004), Anger (Fallujah and white phosphorous in November 2004 into Haditha etc massacres 2005 to present), and Depression (2006 so far).

What remains is Acceptance, i.e. willingness to give up the Potemkin Village of a puppet government and give up the piling up of corpses, which means to withdraw.

[IndianaGreen]

4. Hello? American TV "news" is now reduced to entertainment

Feed the hungry audiences more news about Aruba and the bikini strangler. The majority of Americans are quite happy living within the Matrix and they don't want to be awaken from their slumber.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

5. American society today has the attention span of a gnat.

Sad, but true. People just don't get it.

[spanone]

6. Maybe America is more Ashamed than Apathetic.

I know I am.

[w4rma]

7. It's not really apathy. It's a lack of being able to do anything to change

anything that is going on over there until the elections in November which still probably won't change much since Bush is still "president" until 2008.

Imho.

[Robbien]

9. Wait a minute, WE don't get to decide what is on the news, Media owners do

Media owners feel the bad news coming out of Iraq doesn't help their support of BushCo so they do not schedule Iraq news items.

Don't yell at the public, yell at media owners.