TV News Winds Down Operations on Iraq War

Source: NY Times

Quietly, as the United States presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq.

“The war has gone on longer than a lot of news organizations’ ability or appetite to cover it,” said Jane Arraf, a former Baghdad bureau chief for CNN who has remained in Iraq as a contract reporter for The Christian Science Monitor.

Joseph Angotti, a former vice president of NBC News, said he could not recall any other time when all three major broadcast networks lacked correspondents in an active war zone that involved United States forces.

Except, of course, in Afghanistan, where about 30,000 Americans are stationed, and where until recently no American television network, broadcast or cable, maintained a full-time bureau.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/business/media/29bureaus.html?ref=television

This apathy is our collective shame.

It is truly tragic that so many Americans show so little interest in this war. Bush ran out the typical attention span.

The tone was different during the Viet Nam War. Then, people weren't "apathetic" about the war. They were very interested in the form of being enraged. They protested. Some DUers have said in the past and will continue to say into the future that the biggest mistake of the anti-war movement then was repealing the draft. I am still on the fence about that, as my family suffered through that horrible war directly, but I can't help but ponder how this country's behavior would be different if there were 500,000 American conscripts garrisoning Iraq instead of 150,000 "volunteers."

Like yourself, I have mixed emotions as I was prime cannon fodder during the Viet Nam war with a draft number of 12.

Maybe make it more personal, give names and info about people who are dying? They need people there covering it, very much need it.

The American public was not allowed to hear the "this is for all the orphans and widows you created" part because our shrapnel only hits the bad guys you see :sarcasm:

and it took them 3 days (and only once) to mention how the guy was being tortured.

Thank the gods for the British press, and Al Jazeera.

Why, I had no idea there was any TV news coverage in Iraq. :eyes:

they have a guy who, between rounds at the hotel bar, goes up on the roof and reports about how no one will go out into the country and report about all the good things happening.

They wouldn't have to be covering it today. Oh wait they aren't covering it. So they assist in starting a war, get rich of the contracts then turn their backs on it. What patriots.:sarcasm:

and propaganda for this administration. Now they're bored and don't want to spend the money on full-time correspondents for their pet war, so they want to pretent it doesn't exist.

The media wants the world to forget who complicit they were/are in everything that's happened from the phoney 'Brooks Brothers riot' to the lie that the 'surge' worked to the even bigger lie that things are getting better over there for the Iraqi people.

The death of the media in America is not a big loss. They're liars anyway.

there are "questions" about Obama being from the same state as Gov. Blagojevich

Yeah the internal report and the prosecutor state that there are "NO TIES" but you know there are still "questions"

:eyes:

Oh and a bunch of really rich guys got ripped off by one of their own...which is important but not in "the poor caused our economic downfall" way :eyes:

Americans are tuning out in droves. Therefore, the networks aren't getting a good return on their investment, & the stockholders aren't happy. What the stockholders want, the stockholders get. Never mind that this war is still news!

Follow the money!

....


snort

this is the bush legacy, to continually kill people and forget about them.

Trying to diminish it in light of history

The useless tools that run the networks will be the first ones to go to my gulags.

back then, they all HAD the appetite, now...not so much.