The bomb-go-boom networks

Brent Bozell wrote in Townhall My son's friend Todd Jones just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. At a celebratory gathering at his parents' home, we chatted a while, and I asked him what he thought were the biggest problems facing the military. Without hesitating, he shot back: "The terrorists and the media."

And of the two, the media are doing the most damage. I have great faith in our military, and I think they can andle the terrorists, it will just take a little longer, but will the media be successful in turning public opinion against the military and what they are doing in Iraq first.

The midia desperately wants to turn Iraq into another Vietnam, but they don't realize that the Vietnamize did not want to turn the entire world into a huge Islamic state. That is exactly the objective of the terrorists.

In a rare moment of balance on CBS, Army Capt. Christopher Vick echoed that sentiment: "I think it's hard for Americans to get up every day and turn on the news and see the horrible things that are going on here, because there's no focus on the good things that go on. What they see is another car bomb went off." This kind of coverage is exactly what the terrorists are seeking to achieve, believes Vick. Mark Yost, who served in the Navy during the Reagan years, caused a stir in media circles for stating the obvious in an editorial in the St. Paul Pioneer Press: "to judge by the dispatches, all the Iraqis do is stand outside markets and government buildings waiting to be blown up." On CNN's "Reliable Sources," host Howard Kurtz asked Frank Sesno, a former Washington bureau chief for CNN, about the Yost column. Sesno acknowledged you get more depth from print coverage, but suggested "even then, the bias is towards that which is going wrong, that which is blowing up and that which is not working." He said Americans ask: "Is anything getting rebuilt? Are they really democrats over there? How engaged are the Sunnis? Could I see an interview with any of these founding fathers and founding mothers of this new emerging country? Can you find that? You'll have a hard time doing it." He's not kidding. In late June, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibraham al-Jafari came to Washington. On June 24, he appeared with President Bush at the White House and gave a speech at the National Press Club. But try and find Jafari's name in a Nexis search of TV news. Of the Big Three, only CBS seemed to notice him in Washington -- on their little-seen Saturday morning show.... You already know the media's response to the criticism: It's not their job to lead the cheers but to "tell the truth." That "truth," in their eyes, is the war was an unjustified, costly and ill-planned quagmire. Our news media can proclaim it is not their job to help President Bush win the war on terrorists in Iraq. But their job ought to be to cover all of Iraq, and not just show the American people a stilted nightly horror movie, a dinner plate of Terrorist Helper.