Media now admits Iraq is going well. And yawns
When I sat down at my computer on January 21, 2005, and counted all the stories indexed by Google News, I came up with a total just short of 11,000 negative stories to 407 positive stories, with 123 neutral ones.
This was the ratio on an average day of the Iraq war: 27 “bad news” stories about Iraq for every one reporting some positive developments from the Mesopotamian front of the war on terror….
(A) day (and three years) later, on January 22, 2008, I again sat down at my computer and scanned through news from Iraq, as indexed by Google. Here are the results, and they are quite stunning.
Firstly, it is true that Iraq has largely disappeared from the media radar, especially by contrast with three years ago. Whereas that one day in January 2005, some 11,528 stories discussed various aspects of the situation in Iraq and the political response thereto, three years later, only 3,552 did.
Secondly, the balance between the negative and the positive reports has improved dramatically. On January 22, 2008, there have been 1,944 stories published that dwelt largely on bad news from Iraq: 687 about a terrorist attack at a funeral, 713 reporting the clashes with a Shia cult during the Ashura celebrations, 169 stories reporting on recent US military deaths in Iraq, 150 news items about Iraq in Democratic debates, with the remainder made up of other miscellaneous stories.
That was still a significant number, but the tally of positive news now stood at 1,160. Among them, 711 stories commenting on the decline in roadside bomb attacks, 98 reports about the UN envoy acknowledging the improving situation in Iraq, 46 stories about the new IMF report painting a quite positive picture of Iraqi economy, and various other lesser stories. There have also been 448 neutral news stories, largely relating to troop movements, as well as touting General Petraeus as a possible new commander of NATO.
In all, there was one good news story for every 1.67 bad news ones. Certainly makes for an improvement on the one to 27 ratio th