Media: War? What war?

You may not know this, but for the past 5 years, the United States has been waging a war in Iraq - a war that's killed about 4,000 American military personnel and countless Iraqi civilians.

But if you look at the pop-up media lately, you'd be hard-pressed to find a word about it.

According to a Project for Excellence in Journalism survey, the Iraq War accounted for 23% of stories in the first 10 weeks of 2007. For the same period this year, it's accounted for only 3%. If you're only counting cable news, it's dropped from 24% to a mere 1%.

It's obviously not because the war got less deadly. In fact, casualties increased following the surge (lies by chickenhawks notwithstanding). (Casualties only decreased to what they were before the surge months later.) I think it's because - maybe, just maybe - 2007 was not an election year, while 2008 is?

Just a few months ago, voters cited the failing war as the most important issue. The war was never popular, and had become much less so, and the issue was hurting Republicans. It seems to be then that war items dropped almost completely from the nation's headlines.

It's undeniable that the media has actively tried to ensure a continuing Republican lock on the presidency. This is especially clear as the media glosses over John McCain's links to right-wing religious militants like Rev. Rod Parsley and Rev. John Hagee, while falsely claiming that Barack Obama supports controversial statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Obama has denounced Wright's comments - a fact that the right-wing media ignores.) With the war issue having such potential to damage the GOP, is it surprising the media barely covers it?

Of all the wars since the Revolutionary War, the Iraq conflict is now the second-longest in America's history - behind only Vietnam. The Iraq War has now gone on much longer than America's involvement in World War II. This is especially stinging because the Iraq War was begun over a lie. That's why every single death of an American soldier for the past 5 years should have been a front page story nationwide.

With the media taking the Iraq debacle off the radar screen, the faltering economy now tops the list of Americans' worries. Today, a stock market crash that was predicted by blogs across the political spectrum was averted. The media must be breathing a sigh of relief simply because it keeps attention off that issue too. (The bad economy should have been one of the top issues in the late '90s, but the media was playing up the economic boom hoax to help conservatives who dominated Congress.)

(Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jQlZpvn28yAbvyg8AaAuiELvhINQD8VEUR300)