What if 11 dead in Iraq was covered like 12 dead in W. Virginia?

This is from Salon's War Room. It's an age-old question about news coverage. Why does a story about a few dead here merit more coverage than a story about a lot more dead over there? In this case, the criticism is not that the mine disaster is being covered too much. It's that the deaths in Iraq are not being covered enough.

Of course the reason for that (not a good reason, but a reason) is because dead Americans in Iraq have become common. Death in a coal mine is new. During the Clinton years, the military routinely attacked Iraqi air-defense units that painted our planes patrolling the no-fly zones and it got to the point that it only merited a paragraph in a column of news briefs.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/01/06/mine_iraq/index.html

West Virginia and that other place where Americans have died
When we turned on the television this morning, we saw another round of stories about the Sago mine disaster. It's a big, gripping news story, and we can understand why the networks have thrown so many resources at it.

That said, we couldn't help noticing something this morning. Twelve miners were killed in West Virginia this week. Eleven U.S. troops were killed in Iraq Thursday. Will we see long TV interviews with each and every one of the troops' family members? Live press conferences in which the officials responsible are grilled for answers? Touching reports on their last letters home? Updates from doctors reporting on the condition of soldiers who managed to survive?

We all know who Randal McCloy is. Can anyone name a soldier who was injured in Iraq this week?

We don't mean to take anything away from the importance of what happened in West Virginia. Still, we think it's fair to ask: If the media started covering the deaths of Americans in Iraq like it covered the deaths of Americans in West Virginia, how much longer would the public tolerate the president's war?

You libruls will jus' never git it. How come you hate murica?

I was also wonering how the coverage in Germany with 9 dead in a roof collapse compares to this over the top horseshit on murikan tv.

Because it doesn't happen every day.
You're a news organization, you want ratings, would you rather carry a story that happens every single day (Soldiers dieing)
or would talk about 12 miners trapped in a coal mine (once a year it seems)
If miners got killed every day and soldiers didn't then the soldiers would be on TV all day.
It's profit and ratings, not political bias.

I highly doubt German TV obsesses about an accident the way our US media does. If it wasn't the mining accident it would be a missing blonde somewhere to avoid the truth about the hellhole that is Iraq. Heaven forbid they should focus on the fucking mess that the awol asshole has made of it.

There are an 138,000 survivors!
There are an 137,999 survivors!
ad nauseum

in Iraq and cover the deaths and interview the relatives ad nauseum . . .

This was 12 - not 2,200 . . .

I'll remember this in my talking points this weekend with my conversative
relatives.

You don't consider Iraqis people I guess. Try 130 dead,,,,,

Did anyone say they aren't?

almost under their breath--- about the 11 soldiers lost yesterday.

We need to ask the media WHY! Make a stink.

I think the mine tragedy was awful, but I also think the loss of one soldier after another is awful, and needs the same kind of reporting. (Not to mention all the Iraqi dead--who they don't even bother to count.)

through an odd set of circumstances, the focus of the mine disaster become not the tragic and entirely avoidable death of 12 men, killed by corporate and government malfeasance, but instead the focus became 'the media got it wrong'. How convenient.

Invariable the whoremedia finds some other narrative to distract us from the truth, from the inevitable conclusions to be drawn from an industrial accident like this. So the give us 'bad media', and the give us the lone survivor, but the failure of the government oversight agencies to force the mining company to correct its numerous safety violations is not of any interest to us.

With Iraq they would be delighted to find a shiny object with which to divert us, and every now and then they make a feeble effort to locate just such a gem, but they can't get their crews out of the green zone fortress, so they have just about given up on that.