How expensive Iraq war became Muzak to our ears

Published 8:10 am Monday, June 16, 2008

By Staff
The Iraq war costs us $12.5 billion a month.
That's $5,000 a second.
Yet we hear so little about it anymore.
I was glad to see Cassopolis organize its second peace march Saturday for Father's Day.
Mothers and others said their peace for Mother's Day in May 2007, also organized by WAND (Women's Action for New Directions).
Marcellus rallied in March 2007. That's it for our area.
It blows my mind that no one connects the bad economy that supplanted the war story, as if the $3 trillion in treasure we're pouring in Iraq is unrelated to there being no money left for anything in fraying America – particularly $4.15 gas prices.
The Rocky Mountain News media critic in Denver suggested in a Feb. 16 column that news organizations "treat the economic costs of the war as they've treated U.S. casualties."
After the death of the 3,000th American soldier, his newspaper printed the names of all the dead on the front page.
Jason Salzman wants to see page one filled with graphics representing dollars Colorado communities lost to the war.
I'd like to know where the Iraqi oil industry money went. Oil money, we were assured, would fund reconstruction after we invaded and bombed it into oblivion in the name of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
One thing I noticed June 14 was several Niles people taking part in Cass, including retired judge Casper Grathwohl.
One woman walking was heard to say of her presence, "We don't have this kind of enthusiasm (in Niles). This is great."
What I didn't see was much news coverage of a procession that merited a police escort through the village.
Yet the war is still being heatedly debated, like in the July cover story of the American Journalism Review, dissecting how "the media lost interest in a long-running war with no end in sight."
Since the American press and the nightly network newscasts reflect the appetites of their audiences, it's fair to say the American people also lost interest in the war, just as they got restless with the campaign by its 18-month mark.
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post produced a piece April 24 called "What the family would let you see, the Pentagon obstructs," about Lt. Col. Billy Hall's burial in Arlington National Cemetery.
His family gave the media permission to cover the ceremony, but the military did everything it could to keep journalists at bay, isolating them 50 yards away behind a yellow rope.
The "de facto ban on media at Arlington funerals fits neatly" with White House efforts "to sanitize the war in Iraq," Milbank wrote.
That, in turn, helps keep bloodshed out of the public's mind, which was the point of banning on-base photography of coffins returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and not seeking any tax hikes or World War II-style sacrifices.
As recently as the first quarter of 2007, Iraq consumed 23 percent of the network newshole, compared to just 3 percent for the same period in 2008. A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found cable coverage fell from 24 percent to 1 percent.
A daily tracking of 65 newspapers done by the Associated Press likewise confirms a fall-off in page-one play nationwide.
In September 2007, the AP found 457 Iraq-related stories (154 by the AP) on front pages – mostly related to the progress report Gen. David Petraeus delivered to Congress.
A surge in March coincided with stories keyed to the fifth anniversary of President Bush landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, to famously declare an end to major combat operations.
Flash forward five Marches and only 28 percent of Americans know that this conflict has killed 4,000 of our military personnel. Eight months before, 54 percent were familiar with the correct casualty count, found a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey.
The three broadcast networks' nightly newscasts devoted more than 4,100 minutes to Iraq in 2003 and 3,000 in 2004, then leveled off to 2,000. By 2007, it was half that. The dramatic drop-off is blamed on everything from the danger for journalists on the ground to newsroom budgets and news space shrinking in favor of hyper-local coverage.
With big stories on the homefront like the presidential primaries between a black man, a white woman and a senior citizen and economic malaise, who needs the humongous cost of keeping correspondents in Baghdad?
Americans and their famously short attention spans quickly wandered when the sameness of suicide bombings and sectarian violence settled in like smog.
Long periods when very little changes doesn't meet the definition of news – especially fighting for airtime against the dramatic horse chase of White House politics.
The Los Angeles Times, faced with expenses "unlike anything we've ever faced," reduced Western correspondents from five to a couple. When Lara Logan of CBS News rotates out of Iraq, she might not be replaced. Local staff are replacing Europeans and Americans.
Last year CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox discussed pooling resources to contain expenses, but that idea was abandoned because their needs are incompatible. Cable TV is more about constant repetition, even during lulls.
In February, one story about Iraq made the front page of the Buffalo News in Tim Russert's hometown.
"Close to home while far off at war" told how gadgets help local service members stay in touch with loved ones.
During the same week a year before, there had been four Iraq-related stories – none needing a local angle to justify front-page placement.
That same month, the Birmingham, Ala., paper also ran one story related to the war: "Brownies send goodies, cards to troops in Iraq."
Editors don't sit in their budget meetings and consciously decide to reduce Iraq coverage, but the repetitiveness of the storyline becomes like "Groundhog Day," so no one wants to go for a swim in that pool of bad news unless there's a major development.
The Indianapolis Star deserves heartland praise for giving the war comparable coverage in the first quarter of 2007 compared to the first three months of 2008, with 23 stories each period.
Sig Christenson of the San Antonio Express-News, who co-founded Military Reporters and Editors (MRE), has made five trips to the war zone because "this is not a story we can afford to ignore. There are vast implications for every American, right down to how much gasoline costs when we go to the pump."
Editor and Publisher editor Greg Mitchell also faults journalists for shortchanging "the biggest political and moral issue of our time" by shunting it on a back burner, since waning public interest in Iraq correlates with diminishing news coverage.
Americans have adapted to the abnormal as normal, since the bloody endless conflict is far from America's shores and most of the time out of sight. It's become like Muzak – especially since it's not the children of political leaders and pundits dying.
"You can forgive the American public for being shocked at the (March) violence in Basra," Mitchell told AJR. From the lack of press coverage that's out there, they probably thought the war was over." He wrote the book "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits – and the President – Failed on Iraq."
Some see a connection to profits.
"There is no sense that (the media) are going to be able to meet the numbers that their corporate owners require by offering news about a downer subject like Iraq. It's a terrible dilemma for news organizations," said Ellen Hume, research director at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media and a former journalist.