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From Joel Mowbray : Media’s Selective Outrage, by the Numbers : 5/21/2004

To the casual observer, the situation in Iraq is bleak, the Iraqi people don’t really want democracy, and the only worthwhile story is the brutality and intimidation of Iraqi prisoners.

To the "casual observer" of the mainstream media, that is.

Although common sense and a semi-continuous pulse would be enough to notice the media’s pack mentality in its Iraq coverage, the numbers paint a compelling—and disturbing—picture.

On any given day, Americans are treated to maybe a dozen stories highlighting the good deeds being done by coalition forces—building bridges, literally and figuratively, and generally improving daily life for ordinary Iraqis—and that’s among all cable news outlets and hundreds of newspapers and magazines.

How many Americans know about the five million Iraqis who are now returning to school or the many non-Baathist professionals who are now finally starting to earn a decent salary?

We’ve been inundated with literally thousands of hand-wringing stories about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The media’s obsession is to some degree understandable given the images, as a visual component inherently gives any story that much more life.

But all that can be said about the savage slaughter of American Nicholas Berg at the hands of terrorists—on video—and then some.

The disparity is striking. The numbers speak for themselves.

From May 11 to May 19, there were more than 6,600 stories in the Lexis-Nexis news database with "Abu Ghraib" somewhere in the text. During the same span, there were just over 3,000 with both "Berg" and "Iraq."

To fully appreciate the significance of those statistics, though, the prisoner abuse story was already two weeks old at that point, and the news of Berg’s beheading broke on May 11.

Why is this important? Because the "noise"—the collective impact of news from various sources—has been so focused on Abu Ghraib, the political backdrop is the savagery of Americans, not that of the terrorists we are fighting.

In some respects, the terrorists are winning more favorable coverage.

The terrorists who cut off the 26-year-old American’s head claimed their brutality was revenge for the prisoner abuses. The news media bit. More than half of all stories on Berg mentioned Abu Ghraib, with many leading newspapers running the story with "revenge" or "vengeance" in the headline.

But since when can terrorists be taken at face value? Just because the terrorists claim a certain motive doesn’t mean it is so. Before the Abu Ghraib photos surfaced, terrorists didn’t exactly lack for motivation to kill Americans.

With all the attention on "revenge" or "vengeance," another possible motive has been almost universally ignored.

Less than 10% of stories on Berg stated that he was Jewish, not an unimportant fact when radical Islamic terrorists say "Death to Israel" or "Death to the Jews" like most people breathe.

It’s plausible that Berg’s religion was not a factor in his death. But according to news reports, he had an Israeli stamp in his passport, and it’s more than likely that his murderers knew he was Jewish.

At the very least, it is an important data point that cannot be ignored.

But ignoring is something at which the media specialize.

Consider that during the same May 11 – May 19 period, there were more than 2,500 stories on Fallujah or Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric who is leading a spirited rebellion—with relatively few followers—in the south.

The particular focus on al-Sadr, in fact, has enhanced the perception among many Americans that Shi’ites are radicals who oppose the very concept of democracy.

And why wouldn’t they believe that when the mainstream media has produced precious few stories on the many peaceful demonstrations—led by Shi’ites—calling for al-Sadr to lay down his arms? Look at the numbers: of the 1,571 stories in Lexis-Nexis on al-Sadr, only 31 also contain "peaceful demonstration" (or its plural).

With the June 30 deadline to transfer power to the Iraqi people approaching, the Washington Post on Wednesday offered the following page-one headline: "U.S. Faces Growing Fears of Failure." Media groupthink dictates that the next buzzword to watch is "failure."

Kinda describes the media’s selective outrage in covering the war in Iraq, doesn’t it?

Neal Boortz puts it another way:

I don’t get a printed version of the Washington Post every day, so I cannot say for sure what can and what cannot be found in the pages of that newspaper. I’m betting, though, that in the past two weeks you haven’t found one single story in the Post highlighting things that are going right in Iraq. Not one story about locals befriending American troops. Not one story about the growing Iraqi economy, commerce in Baghdad’s shopping districts, new home construction, new schools, new electric service, satellite television receivers sprouting like mushrooms … not one story.

Ahhhh … but then there’s the story about prison abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. Today the Post releases yet another batch of photos from the prison. It’s as if the Post’s editors are demanding that the presses not roll until new pictures are prepared for the front page.

OK … we get it! Some American soldiers abused — not tortured, abused — Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Those American soldiers are being punished. One has already been sentenced to a year in jail and is receiving a bad conduct discharge. Other trials are pending. The system is working. What is the purpose of continuously hammering this story day after day after day?

Oh … we all know what the purpose is. This is a story that hurts George Bush. This is a story that diminishes public support for the Iraqi front of the war on terror. This is a story that comforts those who despise America … and George Bush.

As I’ve said before … remember the media template. If the story would help Bush, like the beheading of Nick Berg, downplay it. If the story could hurt Bush, like the prison abuse situation, ram it down the reader’s throat every single day until it completely runs out of steam. The goal here is to defeat Bush, not to give a fair and objective look at what is going on in our war on terror.

Question: How do you think America would have fared in World War II if the media had obsessed over stories of wrongdoing by American troops? Wouldn’t the Nazis have loved to have seen coverage in American newspapers detailing civilian deaths in the bombing raids on German industrial and military targets? Couldn’t you see the German high command grinning broadly as they read of demonstrations in the United States demanding an end to the bombings? How many more American deaths would it have taken to finish the job if today’s media had been covering yesterday’s war?

This isn’t World War II. This is World War IV. It’s the war against Islamic terrorism. It has nothing to do with our support of the state of Israel. It is a war against a radical and bloodthirsty element of Islam that grows stronger with every depiction of America as the bad guys. These Islamo-fascist murderers don’t merely want the infidels out of the Middle East, they want and are by Allah determined to achieve a world dominated by radical Islam. They want you living under their Islamic law, whether you wish to convert to their religion or not. They have attacked us on our own soil, and they plan to do so again. Earlier this week we heard warnings that Al Qaeda was anxious to use either a chemical or biological weapon against Americans at home. Today we read of warnings from the FBI to local law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for possible Islamic suicide bombers on American soil.

We have a class of people in this country, call them liberals, progressives, Democrats, socialists, elitists, intellectuals … call them what you like — but we have a class of people in this country who harbor such an intense hatred for George Bush, economic liberty, capitalism, the American culture and American political strength that they will sacrifice the safety and liberty of future generations of Americans just to see America disgraced in the Middle East and George Bush pushed out of the White House in November.

It’s tragic enough that we have to be fighting yet another World War at this time in our history. It’s even more tragic that we seem to have so many Americans who are actively pulling for the other side.