Topic: CNSNews.com
A July 23 CNSNews.com article by Kevin Mooney pushes the corporate Media Research Center tunnel vision that the only possible reason that coverage of the Iraq war has declined is because they don't want to report that the surge was a success.
Mooney wrote:
The number of reporters embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq declined dramatically after the surge in U.S. troop strength went full force last year and violence in the country, including U.S. casualties, started to decline.
As a consequence, there have been fewer reporters in the field with U.S. troops in Iraq this year to report on the successes those troops have achieved.
But Mooney mentioned none of the reasons offered by media analysts why Iraq war coverage has declined -- tight newsroom budgets, a focus on other news like the presidential election -- thus forwarding the baseless suggestion that the reason "there have been fewer reporters in the field with U.S. troops in Iraq" was to avoid reporting "the successes those troops have achieved." That baseless suggestion is reinforced by the article's headline: "As Surge in Iraq Succeeded, Embedded Reporters Receded."
If the MRC can't come up with actual evidence to back up this claim, they should stop inferring it.
UPDATE: A July 23 NewsBusters post by Craig Bannister repeats Mooney's claims, baseless suggestion and all. Bannister, by the way, is CNS' communications director; his NewsBusters bio is curiously empty.
