TELEVSION WARS: IRAK IS BORING

CNN shows how well is covering from everywhere the war in the Middle East. The question is: how many CNN reporters are now covering the war in Iraq?

Howard Kurtz, the media critic of The Washington Post gets this comment from a reader:

"The Israel/Lebanon conflict has taken priority with the media over a war that the United States is actually involved with.

Isn't it the American media's job to focus on a conflict that actually involves American lives rather than a conflict between foreign countries?

Clearly the media is not doing its job or it is just doing the job that the Bush Administration wants it to do.

Anything but Iraq seems to be the mantra of the administration and the media it controls."

And Kurtz is not happy with the TV coverage:

"The 13-day battle between Israel and both Hamas and Hezbollah may be the most up-close-and-personal ever transmitted by television.

Unlike Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, where conditions were either too dangerous or tightly controlled by the U.S. military, the Mideast conflict of 2006 allows journalists to roam freely, not just watching rocket attacks but interviewing victims' families, neighbors, refugees and just about anyone else. It is Vietnam on satellite steroids.

But the very technology that enables reporters to show footage of a Lebanese father soon after his young son has been killed by a bomb blast carries not just an emotional punch but the power to distort the overall picture."