Even as our Sunni Arab enemies have been beaten and switched sides, beginning with the Anbar Awakening and continuing with similar awakenings in central and southern Iraq by other Sunnis and Shias, too, our press has been mostly oblivious to the success:
The current achievements, and they are achievements, are being treated as almost an embarrassment in certain quarters. The entire context of the contest for the Democratic nomination for president has been based on the conclusion that Iraq is an absolute disaster and the first task of the next president is to extricate the United States at maximum speed. Democrats who voted for the war have either repudiated their past support completely (John Edwards) or engaged in a convoluted partial retraction (Hillary Clinton). Congressional Democrats have spent most of this year trying (and failing) to impose a timetable for an outright exit.
Our press has gone along with this view and promoted it, perhaps oblivious to their negative cheerleading efforts. Although it is possible that in another sense, our press contributed to our victory by leading the enemy to think their objective was to get on TV instead of achieving war aims.
Yet as I've noted over the last couple months, there have been surprising admissions of progress in our media. Just moments of clarity rather than a clear view, but this could be building into a trend:
Lt. General Raymond Ordierno on Thursday reported significant progress in reduced violence in Iraq, but of the broadcast network evening newscasts only ABC's World News bothered to cover the positive trend as anchor Charles Gibson introduced a full story on how “military officials gave one of the most upbeat assessments of the security situation in Iraq that we have heard since the opening months of the war.” The CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly skipped the positive trend, but CBS had time for a story on the investigation of the September shooting of civilians by Blackwater and NBC aired a piece on Hillary Clinton “playing the gender card.” The Washington Post and New York Times on Friday also made very different news judgments on the importance of the positive direction as the Post put the news on its front page while the Times hid it in a story, on an inside page, about Iran's role in Iraq.
This was the third time in less than two weeks that ABC has uniquely highlighted positive developments in Iraq. On Tuesday, ABC ran a piece about “booming” shopping markets and significantly improving life in Baghdad and eight days earlier World News showcased Fallujah's “extraordinary comeback story.”
Of course, with the media failing to use their journalism degrees to ferret out this trend in the war until after it has been getting too obvious to ignore, it would be nice if the reporters got over their degrees and went back to reporting what is happening without trying to provide us with an understanding of war that they are ill equipped to provide us.
UPDATE: Well, a media awakening won't happen with tribal leaders who think like this:
It's time for the current generation of journalists – at times seemingly obsessed with Martha Stewart, O.J. Simpson, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and the like – to use that power more vigilantly, and more firmly, with the public interest in mind.
I would hope that the public has an interest in accurate reporting of what is happening rather than trusting the high priests of journalism to use their power in "the public interest." Their interest just isn't mine.
