Now That Things Are Better In Iraq- Major News Outlets Don't Want To Talk About It

Remember last year when the death toll in Iraq was on every front page. When every attack, every death was highlighted each and every day on the news, in print, on television and around the blogosphere?

Things got better in Iraq, so much so, the major news organizations do not feel the American public needs to know how much progress there has been.

That isn't important it seems.

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.”

In a telephone interview last week, Ms. Logan said the CBS News bureau in Baghdad was “drastically downsized” in the spring. The network now keeps a producer in the country, making it less of a bureau and more of an office.

According to Terry McCarthy, an ABC News correspondent in Baghdad, the decline in violence, "is taking the urgency out” of some of the coverage."

Lets be clear here, the journalists are pushing for more coverage, the station and print bigwigs are the ones trying to keep it from the public.

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.

Amazing that. Iraq is coming alive. Prior militia strongholds are now under the control of the Iraqi government. Businesses are reopening and thriving. People are feeling safe and this isn't news anymore.

The difference a year can make is astounding, but the majority of Americans are not getting the memo because major news organizations are refusing to tell them.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm.

.