The media's war

Thomas Sowell wrote in Townhall The media seem to have come up with a formula that would make any war in history unwinnable and unbearable: They simply emphasize the enemy's victories and our losses.

They do that only because they support the Democrats, who are mad that the Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress. Therefore the MSM is mad at Bush, and distorting the news is their way of showing it. I wish some rich Republican would buy the Washington Post. Not to turn it into a conservative newspaper, but to make it Fair and Balanced.

Losses suffered by the enemy are not news, no matter how large, how persistent, or how clearly they indicate the enemy's declining strength. What are the enemy's victories in Iraq? The killing of Americans and the killing of Iraqi civilians. Both are big news in the mainstream media, day in and day out, around the clock. Has anyone ever believed that any war could be fought without deaths on both sides? Every death is a tragedy to the individual killed and to his loved ones. But is there anything about American casualty rates in Iraq that makes them more severe than casualty rates in any other war we have fought?

Actually deaths have been much smaller than almost any other conflict (with the exception of Gulf War I). And would they prefer our military to confront the Islamoterrists in Baghdad and Basrah or in Boston, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Bismarck, Boise, Buffalo, Broken Arrow, or Beaumont; in Mosul or in Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Mobile, Memphis, Muskogee, or Mesquite; in Karkuk and Karbala or in Kansas City, Knoxville, Ketchum, or Kilgore; in Tall Afar and Tikrit or in Tulsa, Tallahassee, Tampa Bay, Terre Haute, Toledo, Topeka, Tucson, Tahlequah, Texas City, or Texarkana.

On the contrary, the American deaths in Iraqi are a fraction of what they have been in other wars in our history. The media have made a big production about the cumulative fatalities in Iraq, hyping the thousandth death with multiple full-page features in the New York Times and comparable coverage on TV.