Gabler's Complaint: Media's Iraq Coverage Not Negative Enough

December 31st, 2005 6:56 PM

I can now confirm what I've long suspected: Neal Gabler and I inhabit different planets. 

I inhabit the one in which the MSM coverage of the Iraqi war is a virtually-uninterrupted drumbeat of the negative.  From headline coverage of every IED that goes off, to the beatification of Cindy Sheehan, the liberal media's treatment of the war has been decidedly downbeat.

Neal Gabler, on this evening's Fox Media Watch, looked at the same coverage and complained that the MSM . . . has not been negative enough.  He began his plaint with a bizarre and distasteful analogy, suggesting that if the media had covered JFK's assassination in the same manner they cover Iraq, they would have reported "President Kennedy dead; everyone else OK." 

Gabler's evidence in support of his media-as-Pollyanna charge?  An article by liberal's liberal James Fallows in the Atlantic magazine asking why the Iraqi army hasn't been trained more quickly, his own question as to why there aren't more oil revenues, and a wringing of hands at the prospect of democracy in Iraq bringing a theocracy to power.  As if, Fallows and Gabler aside,  we haven't been barraged daily by Iraqi doom-and-gloom courtesy the NY Times/NBC-ABC-CBS/CNN etc. ad nauseum?

When does the New Year arrive on Jupiter, Neal?  And does it usher in 2006, or the Age of Aquarius?