If A Tree Fell In The Forest And Nobody Heard It....

Or, how about if we won in Iraq and nobody reported it?

Violence is way down in Iraq. A news service that has been historically hostile to the United States made that information available to all news outlets.

Did you read about it? Probably not. But nobody thought the information worthy of printers ink.

Reuters serves thousands of newspapers and media outlets worldwide. Their story didn't come from an anonymous source, nor was this the result of an exclusive interview with the Interior Minister in Iraq. It came from a public announcement from the ministry. Given the critical nature of the information for the war debate, one would expect that American news outlets would give this some high-profile coverage, either by reprinting the Reuters wire service copy or assigning reporters to the announcment ... right?

Wrong. Despite the announcement coming well before deadline yesterday -- the Reuters article has a 1:01 pm ET timestamp -- the major newspapers apparently didn't consider the violence drop newsworthy today. The Los Angeles Times covers the National Assembly's proposal to limit US military missions in Iraq. The New York Times reports on Kurdish terrorism in Iran. The Washington Post didn't even bother to have a report on Iraq for its morning edition today.

That's no even the worst of it. Newsweek magazine is accusing the Bush Administration of hiding good news. What will these people think of next?

The Bush administration is starving for good news out of Iraq, and it may finally have some: new U.S. government statistics showing that violent attacks of all kinds are down to levels not seen since 2005. But until recently, the administration appears to have resisted acknowledging a key element of the new data, because it flies in the face of President George W. Bush's ongoing rhetorical confrontation with Iran's clerical regime.

Can you believe this crap? The Mainstream Media is so devoted to making everything seem sinister and screwed up in Iraq that they even report declining violence as bad news. See here.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

If the MSM want an explanation of their declining influence, maybe they should look within.