Around the World, the Media Hates Peace

I was driving with my wife this morning, and I mentioned that the Iraqi referendum had passed with virtually no violence. About a half percent of voting stations were attacked, which means ninety-nine and a half percent of polling stations watched thousands of Iraqis vote without incident. And like last year, Iraqis held their thumbs high with pride -- without fear of reprisal.

Meanwhile, the radio news came on. It reported, and I'm not making this up, "Despite scattered attacks, Iraqis turned out to vote..." Scattered attacks? God forbid you allow the news on Iraq to be portrayed in a positive light. But it's not just the radio that wants people to think our country is failing.

The Media Research Center has recently released a report on ABC, CBS, and NBC's coverage of Iraq (press release, summary, PDF, html). The bottom line -- only 15% of MSM stories about Iraq were positive. Forty percent of stories were on the actions of terrorists, whereas only 0.6% of stories actually reported on positive accomplishments of US forces. Even stories about the political progress were overwhelmingly negative. A third of the optimistic reports about Iraq's future were aired in the two days after the January elections.

Ouch. With friends like that, who needs enemies? Five years ago I wouldn't have been caught dead saying this, but Al Jazeera is more trustworthy than our own press. Need proof? Try reading Al Jazeera's headline article today. Compare it to this AP article, where you can see the author trying to find a negative spin. Even the title seems negative: "Sunnis Appear to Fall Short in Iraq Vote." Or, without the spin, "Iraqi Voters Appear to Approve New Constitution."

Conservative Nation has some additional thoughts on this, as well as the validity of Bush's recent polls numbers.

It's not just the Western press that hates us. And it's not just the West that is affected by the pervasive slanting of reality. If you were unlucky enough to have watched Fahrenheit 9/11, you may have thought the damage was limited to left-wing reactionaries convincing Americans that our government is a collection of incompetent crooks. But in this modern world, a movie like that has repercussions throughout the world. As we speak, the Iranian-owned Channel 2 is broadcasting a satire called Fahrenheit Infinity (video, transcript). Between Hollywood and the MSM, we are providing our enemies everything they need to convince audiences that we are evil incarnate.

Here's the good news: Despite the bad press, it appears that the constitution will pass. I'm sure more complete numbers will trickle in throughout the day, but here are the most complete numbers I've found to date.

Labels: iraq, media

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