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Media Dropping the Ball on Lebanon, Afghanistan

From the annals of media criticism. Greg Mitchell says that the U.S. media has been shamefully silent on the United States' deep involvement in the Israel-Lebanon war, its role as arms merchant to Israel, or the possible consequences of this alliance. "Fox News, for example, seems to be more concerned about Hezbollah agents sneaking over the Mexican or Canadian borders into the U.S."

Meanwhile, Sherry Ricchiardi of the American Journalism Review notes that Afghanistan has now become "The Forgotten War" in the U.S. press, despite the fact that the Taliban is dangerously resurgent there and conditions are becoming worse and worse in the country. Few news organizations maintain a constant presence there anymore, with the exception of the New York Times and some of the wire services. One can only imagine that the same thing may inevitably happen to Iraq, as the media turns its short-attention span to the next war-of-the-hour and ignores everything else.

On a related note—and this isn't necessarily criticism of the press, although it could be—Paul McLeary has an interesting post on how Hezbollah has been cultivating relationships with reporters as part of its broader media strategy. See also this piece about Israel's "cyber-soldiers," who are flooding chat rooms and online forums to counter anti-Israeli sentiment on the internet.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 07/28/06 at 12:59 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |