Iraq War Media Bias

A few days ago Tony Snow was asked if the President, based on his determined pursuit of continuous failure, is out of touch with reality with regard to Iraq. Of course we know that Bush can never be wrong about anything, so in true mouth-piece fashion Snow asserted that it is the American people who are out of touch with reality in this regard.

While it may be true that the average American citizen is not completely informed of the situation in Iraq, it is not at all an answer or even a counter-argument to the question.

According to the ISG Report, "there is a significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases. A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

Additionally, the Bush Administration has spent $20 million on "extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq."

Furthermore, misinformation propagated by the media is actually considered a threat to peace by many Arab leaders. Tariq al-Hashimi, Iraq's Sunni Arab vice-president, said "the false allegations promoted by Western media have resulted in an [inappropriate] political process, and everyone is paying the price for its wrong foundations. Western media always put question marks around this community and speak of it in the same breath as terrorism. They portray it as a community that is still incapable of comprehending the new Iraq; hence, it is not qualified to play a role in a democratic process. Such allegations are backed by lobbies whose aim is to undermine Iraqi nationalism."

So here we have Tony Snow implying that if the American public were better-informed they would not think that Bush is out of touch with the reality of Iraq -

while the administration puts $20 million into filtering the news.
while the level of violence is underreported.
while misinformation threatens peace.

Nice defense Tony.