Brandon9000 wrote:The fact that the two rates are even comparable would seem to belie the liberal picture of civilians dying left and right in Iraq.
As usual, Brandon is correct. Meanwhile, many continue page after page of making cute, snooty, snide remarks in regard to what Brandon has pointed out, which does not negate the validity of his general argument, but merely demonstrates the vacuous opposition. The truth is that his point is valuable and pertinent in regard to more than a couple of aspects.
Without belaboring the argument of exactly what the numbers are, what matters is that it appears that we are talking roughly similar rates instead of radical differences by orders of magnitude between violent deaths in some American cities vs Iraq. Brandon indeed brings up a comparison that is worth recognizing and thinking about in terms of analyzing news and how news has affected the views of Americans in regard to Iraq. A few observations are in order.
First, we hear about Iraq every day in the national news, but hear little or nothing about violent deaths in American cities. Apparently, the deaths in American cities are acceptable as sort of expected normalcy. Can it be interpreted that those people in American cities don't matter as much? It could also mean there is little or nothing anybody thinks that could be done about it. Even though the deaths in Iraq are due to terrorists, suicide bombers, etc., it is considered to be somehow more surprising and unacceptable by the news media.
If you compare violent deaths in the cities of a supposedly peaceful country with that of a country still suffering from terrorists, suicide bombers, and pockets of opposition to the reconstruction of the country, how is it that the deaths in America are considered normal and those in Iraq are abnormal and cause for throwing up our hands in defeat? Nobody seems to even think the violent deaths in America are much of a problem, let alone seriously animated about a solution for it.
None of this takes away from the tragedy of terrorism and suicide bombers, but we do need to have some perspective of some comparisons, which is what Brandon attempted to do. Instead of not reporting the mayhem in Iraq, perhaps the news media needs to begin caring about and reporting other things as well, including any good news to balance things out a bit. And if you want to compare wars, this one is still pretty insignificant compared to some others.
I believe news reporting is now mostly emotionally based and has been watered down by removing the details surrounding the issues. The news becomes a series of sound bytes that contain nothing much of value except words and phrases designed to capture the attention and entertain the audience. It thus becomes almost worse than no information at all because it becomes misleading, incomplete, and inaccurate.
