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November 20, 2007

Herd Journalism On Iraq Like 'Blackbirds On A Telephone Wire'

Topics: Iraq

As we've previously noted, the news media' has long had no qualms about publishing propaganda as news and twisting stories of success in Iraq into, what AJ Strata has described as being "under the keyboard of a single media ideologue" - things in Iraq are going bad and the we are loosing the war. It's been herd journalism at its worst, and to the detriment of our effort in Iraq. However, times are changing and the herd is changing direction - they are, as Fred Barnes puts it, quoting Gene McCarthy, acting "like blackbirds on a telephone wire":

I think it was that great Democratic wit Gene McCarthy who described journalists and reporters as blackbirds on a telephone wire. When one flies to the telephone wire across the street, they all do. There's also a non-bird name for this phenomenon. It's called herd journalism. And just this week we've seen it pop up in stories about the pacification of Baghdad, crushing of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and almost complete end of the Sunni-Shia civil war. Taken together, these stories amount to a consensus that the surge of additional American troops and the counterinsurgency strategy adopted by General David Petraeus has worked - and worked brilliantly.

The herd? It consists, so far, of the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times, and Newsweek - and no doubt others that I have yet to come upon. And the herd is likely to grow larger because the evidence of success in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq is so palpable that reporters, regardless of their view of the war, were bound to acknowledge it at some point. Yes, they've taken a while to do so. For several months, the American press corps in Iraq merely - and sometimes grudgingly - reported the claims of American military officials that the number of American combat deaths, Iraqi deaths, suicide bombings, roadside attacks, and other forms of violence were declining precipitously. Now they're reporting progress that they've seen with their own eyes. This is a big step for a media contingent that appeared to be as locked into the idea that the war is lost as Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid is.

Continue reading: Barnes: Herd Journalism, Iraq Edition

This is not to say, however, that all the herd is in on the change in direction. There's still going to be the al-Guardians of the world press that Continue To Propagate Terrorist's Propaganda.

Posted by Richard at November 20, 2007 8:46 PM

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• Herd Journalism On Iraq Like 'Blackbirds On A Telephone Wire' - Nov 20, 2007