Rumsfeld Says Media Shows Only 'Negative' Side of Iraq War

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http://www.blackanthem.com/World/2005062907.html

Rumsfeld Says Media Shows Only 'Negative' Side of Iraq War

Blackanthem.com, WASHINGTON, D.C., June 29, 2005



Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took to the airwaves June 27 to clear up what he characterized as "misinformation" by the media about the war in Iraq, telling radio listeners in Kansas City, Mo., that "the news media seem to want to carry the negative."


During an interview with Jerry Agar of KMBZ News Radio 980, who recently visited Iraq for a first-hand look at conditions there, the secretary addressed a "disconnect" between what's really happening in Iraq and what the American public sees and hears in the media.

"Everyone I talk to who goes to Iraq and comes back, say they are just amazed at the difference between their impressions from what they've heard in the media and see on television, and what they actually saw first hand in Iraq," Rumsfeld said. "I suppose part of that is because the news media seem to want to carry the negative, and the news media doesn't present on television every day the large number of people who are killed in car accidents, or the large number of people who are homicide victims in the United States every day. Maybe if they did, there would be fewer car accidents and less homicides."

But, he added, "they do carry every act of violence that occurs in Iraq it seems, over and over and over."

Rumsfeld said the media don't report that Iraq's schools are open and the hospitals are functioning, "or (that) the stock market's there, or that in large chunks of the country it's relatively peaceful."


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