Basra and Afghan copter crashes-- was this front page news ANYWHERE?!?!

[TexasLawyer]

I know the media is being told from on high that they must tell the "good news" about our little quagmire in the Middle East. But is it OK to just bury the bad news?

I am more than a little upset that these hard news items about the copters getting shot down-- which should have been put on the front page-- were buried deep within the bowels of the front sections of the two newspapers that I receive.

Houston Chronicle--The Basra copter crash (and the mayhem that followed in that formerly peaceful city (relatively speaking)) got coverage on page 28 of the Houston Chronicle. The 10 troops that died in the Afghanistan copter crash had their story told on page 29. And this when the front page of the Chronicle carried an almost half page photo of the horse that won the Kentucky Derby and several "soft news" stories.

New York Times--buried on page 14. Same issue with the huge Kentucky Derby photo. And, utterly fascinating as the Barry Bonds drama is, does a story about Mr. Bonds need to trump our dead soldiers on the NYT front page?

I guess no news or buried news is the "good news" that BushCo is looking for!

So were the copter crashes front page news anywhere in America? I'd be interested to know. Letters to the editor may be in order across America.

[TexasLawyer]

1. Media Matters for America

I want to send whatever info I get on this to MMM. Burying important war stories is a huge problem.

And the more that the American public has this disastrous war right in its face, the more willing Americans will be to help put a stop to it.

The war is not going to stop until Americans MAKE it stop. BushCo will have us there forever!

[Shipwack]

3. "Front Page" of Google News, if that counts for anything....

Only time I buy physical newspapers is when I have to wrap glasses up for moving.

[Selatius]

2. Letters to the editor have been in order since almost the beginning

As A.J. Liebling said, "Freedom of the press is limited to those who have one." Do you have a press? No. In the US, there is no such thing as a people's press where the people get to choose the editor in chief or set policy. Do the corporations have presses? Yes, it's called CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX. They set the policy instead, and the policy is making money and helping out their corporate buddies (i.e. not covering the war too critically and making the government that gave you the corporate tax cuts look bad).

With one of them, General Electric, it appears there is a vital conflict of interest as they own NBC. If you're going to get billions in government contracts to build war machines, why not also make more money by parroting talking points from Bush Co.? Afterall, if a war breaks out, ratings spike, and that means more money. Money from building bombs and money from high viewership in a run-up to war. It's win-win, and the shareholders will be happy.

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." -- Gen. Smedley Butler

[acmejack]

4. The exact reason I gave up on print media years ago.

I rely on the Google news crawler and the BBC International RSS feeds. You really don't miss much relying on those two. In fact, you don't miss anything relying on the BBC feed alone as far as news goes.

[TexasLawyer]

6. I am more concerned about the average Joe

I read the net and rely on DU, Truthout and a lot of foreign sources for news. So I am not really concerned about missing news myself.

But a lot of Americans JUST get their news from TV and the newspaper. Sunday newspapers are especially important-- they have HUGE circulations.

I think it is important to put pressure on news sources to report responsibly. The average Joes are the people who put Bush in power, and they are the same people who can end the war in Iraq if they have the right info in front of them.

[spindrifter]

5. The British have their priorities

right, primarily because the Basra helicopter carried their people and the incident erupted into a serious anti-British attack by Basrans who clearly do not want the British in their city. In addition, the British are going to be taking up the slack the U.S. is planning to give them as they draw down troops in Iraq, except for special ops--supposedly:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Guess they figured that since the Afghan crash was not directly combat-related, it rates the type of coverage we would give a traffic accident, rather than pushing it as significant because so many died for no good purpose.
As for the NYT, well, there is a below the fold paragraph on the helicopter crashes that directs people to p. 14.
I guess they would argue that they have tagged it on the first page. To give them minor credit--the stories on Ohio races, the CIA (two) and another investigation of campaign contribution corruption are significant. If I were the editor, I would have put the Iraqi kidnap victim on an inside page, and Bonds can get moved to the sports section.

[TexasLawyer]

7. The Afghan crash probably was combat related

There is a huge Taliban resurgence in that area and in neighboring Pakistan, and insurgents claimed responsibility for bringing the copter down. The military spokespeople were very cagey when talking about this.

[spindrifter]

8. I consider any troop movement

to be "combat-related."

[TexasLawyer]

9. good point!

If there was no war on, then our guys wouldn't have occasion to fly around over a bunch of hot-headed people with grudges and RPGs.