A Surge of Good News

October 30, 2007 - 3:00 ET

Have you noticed how quiet the media has been about the war in Iraq lately? why is that? Did they all forget that we're still fighting?

The Real Story is that, when it comes to our mainstream media, good news is not news, and that's why they're all now suddenly interested in astronauts and fires and, well, really anything other than the war. For example, USA Today ran a front page story this morning that, if you looked really hard, contained some great news out of Iraq: The number of U.S. troops killed by snipers is down over 60 percent from June to October. That's fantastic, right? Yes, but USA Today's headline was "Pentagon Sniper Data Not Accurate." To them, and to most of our media, a budget error was a bigger story than a huge reduction in troop deaths. That's an embarrassment, and although I may work in the mainstream media, please don't ever confuse me for a member of it.

Of course, if the media had actually bothered to report on those stats, they might have stumbled across quite a coincidence: June -- the month where sniper deaths seemingly started to decline -- just happens to also be the month when the troop surge reached full strength. How convenient! That got me wondering what else has happened in Iraq since June that the media has ignored? Well I checked the Pentagon stats and here is some of the unbelievable progress we've made:

-Since June, Iraqi civilian deaths are down over 50 percent.
-Last June 101 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq. So far in October, 37 have died -- and almost a third of those were non-combat related.
-In June, 74 troops were killed by IED's....so far in October, 16 have been killed -- that's a 78 percent decline.

Let me ask you this oh fair, balanced, and unbiased media: if those stats were reversed...if IED deaths were UP 78 percent, wouldn't it be front page news EVERYwhere? You bet it would...so why isn't this news ANYwhere?