We often hear from right wing pundits and warbloggers that we aren't getting the 'good news' from Iraq. Rueters AlertNet's Deputy Editor Tim Large asks in his blog if we're actually getting all of the bad news.Earlier this week, medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres released its annual list of the world's top 10 under-reported humanitarian stories, throwing the spotlight on crises from Central African Republic to central India. All the emergencies had one thing in common -- they were given next-to-no airtime on U.S. TV networks' nightly newscasts in 2006. In the battle for eyeballs, suffering in Chechnya, Colombia and Congo just couldn't compete with geopolitically sexy stories like Iraq.
But here's a question out of left-field: Could Iraq itself be an under-reported humanitarian emergency?
The key word here is humanitarian. There's no doubt that the political story of Iraq monopolises the headlines -- and not just in the weeks leading up to Saddam Hussein's execution.
It's a damned good question. The news media treats Iraq like a game of Risk with players fighting over a country in the middle east. There may be no one in the developed world who doesn't know there's a war in Iraq, but there are probably plenty who don't know the extent of the humanitarian crisis. As we so often do when we discuss, analyze, and fight political battles at home over wars abroad, we tend to forget -- or ignore -- the fact that people actually live there...
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Tags: news | politics | war | Iraq | Iran | Syria | disaster | Bush
