Crush Liberalism

Study shows that MSM disappeared as news in Iraq improved

From Pew Research:

From January 2007 — when Bush announced the “surge” — through the end of May 2007, Iraq had been the dominant story, accounting for 20% of all the news coverage measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. But from the time of that May funding vote through the war’s fifth anniversary on March 19, 2008, coverage plunged by about 50%. In that period, the media paid more than twice as much attention to the presidential campaign as it did to the war.

All that helps explain another eye-catching statistic. In the first three months of 2008, coverage of the campaign outstripped coverage of the war by a margin of more than 10-to-1 (43% of the newshole compared with 4%). In an environment in which newsroom cutbacks and decreasing resources may make it more difficult for news outlets to stay atop two ongoing mega-stories, the media, for now, have made their priorities clear. …

But there is another key reason why the war has virtually disappeared from the headlines and talk shows these days — and that’s the situation inside Iraq itself. The reduction in violence on the ground that began late last year has coincided with a significant decrease in coverage from the war zone as well.

Through the first half of 2007, about half the stories from Iraq examined in a PEJ study were about the continuing drumbeat of daily violence. From July through October, that number fell to a little more than one-third. In November, stories filed from Iraq began to take greater notice of the surge’s success in reducing violence, even as the volume of coverage tapered off, evidence perhaps of the old adage that no news is good news. 

Nope…no liberal media bias!

March 28, 2008 - Posted by crushliberalism | Iraq, media bias