Tonight, Not on the News. . .

Patriot Report

A popular Leftist bumper sticker during the Vietnam War read: “What if they had a war, and no one came?” An appropriate sticker for today might ask: “What if the U.S. won a war, but the media didn’t report it?” Despite a plethora of good news about the Iraq war, news outlets are reporting everything except the coalition’s great success. The Iraq War no longer follows the narrative that Leftists and defeatists (but we repeat ourselves) believe it should, and so they have decided that our heroic efforts there are no longer newsworthy.

A case in point is the 18 benchmarks that Congress set last year for Iraqi progress. As of last week, Iraq had met 15 of those benchmarks, but only Fox News Channel saw fit to report it. Fox anchor Brit Hume even predicted as much, saying he doubted that “word of this progress is going to get through. I suspect that this broadcast tonight—and maybe some others on this channel—are the only ones who are going to make a headline out of this.” He was right. While Fox cited the progress in Iraq, most of the Leftmedia outlets were reporting that U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan had risen.

Also ignored is the fact that al-Qa’ida in Iraq has been driven from its last stronghold in Mosul and that attacks by insurgents and militias are down 90 percent from one year ago. Conditions on the ground have improved to the point that the last of the “surge brigades” will leave Iraq by the end of this month, and more than 300 soldiers who were supposed to deploy last month were turned around. But it’s not likely that we will hear any of this on the nightly news. According to American Journalism Review, 23 percent of last year’s news coverage was about Iraq. This year, it has fallen to three percent. One could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that, so far as the Leftmedia is concerned, winning isn’t news.

In the Senate, at least, winning means something. Gen. David Petraeus was confirmed almost unanimously Thursday as the new commander of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Ray Odierno was confirmed as the new top U.S. commander in Iraq.