our pathetic media

Goodbye Baghdad, Hello Kabul

As the Obama administration debates whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, a squadron of journalists has already arrived. Many of them are transplants from America’s other overseas war, in Iraq.

“It’s like the Baghdad class of 2003 is now the Kabul class of 2009,” Richard Engel of NBC said by telephone Saturday from Kabul, the Afghanistan capital.

No longer overshadowed by Iraq, the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan, as news outlets had once called it, is suddenly very visible. Television networks have opened small bureaus, and major newspapers have assigned more staff members to the country, and its neighbor to the east, Pakistan. But with the media business under great strain, this war is being covered on a budget.

“Afghanistan has always been the poor man’s war,” Lara Logan of CBS said in an interview; the news media, too, are spending less.

For the first time in years, Afghanistan has “emerged as the top story” for news organizations in the United States, the Project for Excellence in Journalism reported this month.

“I think there’s been an explosion of coverage,” said Renee Montagne, the host of “Morning Edition” on National Public Radio, who spent a month in Afghanistan over the summer.

Much of the current attention is centered on President Obama’s formation of a new American strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. But events inside the country are earning more coverage now, as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/business/media/19coverage.html?8dpc=&_r=1&pagewanted=print