{"id":57,"date":"2003-10-16T15:58:42","date_gmt":"2003-10-16T19:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2003\/10\/circumventing_the_filter\/"},"modified":"2003-10-16T15:58:42","modified_gmt":"2003-10-16T19:58:42","slug":"circumventing_the_filter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/10\/circumventing_the_filter\/","title":{"rendered":"Circumventing the “Filter”"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, Rep. George Nethercutt had this to say<\/a> (via Talking Points Memo<\/a>):<\/p>\n

“The story of what we’ve done in the postwar period is remarkable,” Nethercutt, R-Wash., told an audience of 65 at a noon meeting at the University of Washington’s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.
\n“It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Afterward, Nethercutt reportedly added that “he did not want any more soldiers to be killed”–a good qualifier to add as you’re seeking elective office.
\nNethercutt is but one of the pro-Iraq war proponents who have engaged in a recent campaign, lead by President Bush, to blame the media<\/a> for America’s faltering support for our Iraq policy:<\/p>\n

In one of the television interviews, Bush vented some pique at major television stations and big-city newspapers for focusing as he saw it on the negative.
\nHe referred to such media as a “filter” that he says has given short shrift to what he sees as the administration’s accomplishments in Iraq.
\n“Sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people,” Bush told Hearst-Argyle Television, which owns local affiliate stations from coast to coast in the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The crux of this type of complaint against the media is that there are too many bad stories about Iraq, and not enough good ones.
\nMost people will agree that the media should be presenting a balanced picture of developments in Iraq. And that probably entails more “success” stories on the progress of rebuilding. A primary reason we don’t see more of those now is basic economics–the American public isn’t very interested in the physical rebuilding of Iraq. Any network that runs extended segments on the restoration of Iraq’s power grid is embarking on a ratings free fall.
\nAs for the supposed overemphasis on bad news, is this criticism fair? The negative coverage has had two main themes: American casualties and the cost of occupation\/rebuilding. Reporting on government spending has long been a media staple. Although war proponents may object to the questioning of spending on this narrow issue, it’s not going to go away–people are always interested in where taxpayer money goes.
\nWhat about the casualty coverage? Has that been overblown? I don’t think so. As one news analyst recently asked: on which page of the paper should the story of an American being killed go? Page 1 or page 17? I think the answer to that is pretty clear. The Bush administration may want to downplay the shedding of American blood, but it’s going to remain in the spotlight.
\nIn short, Bush et al. complain about the filter, and there may something to that. But there are institutional reasons which account for the coverage we see. As much as the administration may not like it, we’re going to continue seeing more of the negative than the positive from Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, Rep. George Nethercutt had this to say (via Talking Points Memo): “The story of what we’ve done in the postwar period is remarkable,” Nethercutt, R-Wash., told an audience of 65 at a noon meeting at the University of Washington’s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. “It is a better and more important […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-57","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}