Media Progression

Anybody notice that the screaming about "bad news" in Iraq has produced a steady drumbeat of what doesn't merit as much attention?

20 dead in a bombing doesn't really merit lead story status anymore. And almost inevitably that 20 dead grows to 50 dead by mid-day. Yet note how such days become less and less prominantly covered.

This is the real purpose of the Bush Administration's whining. To get the news to self-censor itself.

I don't know who is morbid enough to keep the death watch, but for the last month it has been a steady drumbeat of at least 50 dead a day out of that country through large scale violence, with death tolls apparently higher than 1,000 in the immediate aftermath of the Samarra Mosque bombing.

And now, there seems to me to be a perceptable shift away from providing detailed covereage of the scope of the nightmare.

Time for more shark attacks, missing young white women, or whatever faux outrage FoxNews will allow Brent Bozell to generate this time.

For example:

The old standard, "me hatey the mexican" is there for a new and improved roll-out. Or how about "The War on Easter"?