Media bias and the Iraqi war

Thomas Sowell has published a column on the effect that media bias is having on the Iraqi war effort.

There are still people in the mainstream media who profess bewilderment that they are accused of being biased. But you need to look no further than reporting on the war in Iraq to see the bias staring you in the face, day after day, on the front page of the New York Times and in much of the rest of the media.

If a battle ends with Americans killing a hundred guerrillas and terrorists while sustaining ten fatalities, that is an American victory. But not in the mainstream media. The headline is more likely to read: "Ten More Americans Killed in Iraq Today."

This kind of journalism can turn victory into defeat in print or on TV. Kept up long enough, it can even end up with real defeat, when support for the war collapses at home and abroad.

In fact we now know that the Vietnam War was lost in the media. The communist leaders of North Vietnam wrote about it in their diaries and have admitted it publicly. Yet, as Sowell points out, the coverage of the Vietnam war is a point of pride for journalists.

Too many in the media today regard the reporting of the Vietnam War as one of their greatest triumphs. It certainly showed the power of the media — but also its irresponsibility. Some in the media today seem determined to recapture those glory days by the way they report on events in the Iraq war.

First, there is the mainstream media's almost exclusive focus on American casualties in Iraq, with little or no attention to the often much larger casualties inflicted on the guerrillas and terrorists from inside and outside Iraq.

Sometimes I wonder if these journalists are even Americans. (Hat tip to Blackfive.)