The Truth Hurts

We have been noting for some time the convergence of interest between Baathist terrorists and Democratic politicians, who both want the war in Iraq to go badly for us, and the American news media, who happily oblige both parties by their relentlessly negative coverage. Democratic Congressman Jim Marshall recently returned from Iraq and wrote a much-quoted op-ed in the Atlanta Jounal Constitution in which he asked whether the media’s one-sided, negative coverage of developments in Iraq is encouraging the Baathists and thereby contributing to our casualties.
Liberal blogger/pundit Josh Marshall took great offense to the Congressman’s article, saying “It really doesn’t get much lower than that.”
Glenn Reynolds has done an excellent job of providing positive stories from Iraq to balance the mainstream media’s bias, and it seems that the usually mild-mannered professor delivered this hard-hitting rejoinder to Josh Marshall:
“Josh Marshall finds that the truth hurts. He’s not happy about Democratic Congressman Jim Marshall (whom Josh originally misidentified as a Republican) saying that negative media coverage is getting our troops killed. But Marshall the Congressman, and a Vietnam vet, was there, and thinks negative publicity is encouraging the Baathist holdouts to believe that they can pull a Mogadishu and get the United States to pull out. Marshall the pundit might want to ponder the possibility that reflexive media negativity, counted on by our foes to advance their plans, might actually, you know, advance their plans.
“It’s not the reporting of criticisms or bad things that’s the issue — the first-person accounts I link below all have criticisms and negative information. It’s the lazy Vietnam-templating, the ‘of course America must be losing’ spin, the implicit and sometimes explicit sneer, and the relentless bringing to the fore of every convenient negative fact while suppressing the positive ones that’s the issue. It’s what the terrorists are counting on, and it’s what too many in the media are happy to deliver, because they think it’ll hurt Bush.
“And it doesn’t get any lower than that.”