Cause and Effect?

Greetings from the Left Coast! Some amazing stories moved over the news wires today. Here's one from the New York Times : "Militant Group Is Out of Baghdad, U.S. Says." The lead paragraph goes on to say, "American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood of Baghdad, a top American general said today, allowing American troops involved in the 'surge' to depart as planned."

Did you catch that? Al Qaeda has been kicked out of every neighborhood in Baghdad! Did you get that, Senator Harry "This war is lost" Reid? Murders in Baghdad are down 80% from their peak, and attacks involving improvised bombs are down 70%! This was such great news that the New York Times ran the story on....page A-19. I looked all through the Everett Herald this morning, the story wasn't there. I searched the Web sites of The Seattle Times and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The story wasn't there, either.

In related news, Iraqi refugees are starting to come home. The Iraqi government says that 46,030 people crossed the borders in October alone. This story was carried by the Everett Herald this morning, on page 4. I was able to find it (somewhat to my surprise) on The Seattle P-I's Web site, but couldn't find it on The Seattle Times' Web site nor on the New York Times' Web site.

Finally, the London Times reported today that senior Shia and Sunni religious leaders in Iraq are preparing to sign a "fatwa against violence." A fatwa is a religious ruling that devout Muslims consider to be equal to statutory law. Nothing like this has ever happened before. A quick Internet search didn't turn up any U.S. newspapers reporting this story.

Meanwhile, the Audit Bureau of Circulations released circulation numbers for more than 700 daily newspapers for the six-month period ending September 2007. The New York Times was down 4.51% for the daily edition, and 7.59% for the Sunday edition. Washington Post, daily down 3.2%, and Sunday down 3.9%. Boston Globe down 6.6% and 6.5%, respectively. Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News both down more than 10%. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch down 4.18%. The Seattle Times and the P-I, believe it or not, actually gained slightly - 1.2% and 1.1%, respectively. The Tacoma News Tribune, which itself was down 3.9%, credited the Times and P-I gains to readership they picked up when the King County Journal ceased publication this past January.

Many people don't see any correlation between these stories. The newspapers themselves certainly don't. In the face of steady circulation declines year after year, they blame on-line news sources, new media, radio talk shows, everything but their own editorial bias. I'm not sure that anything short of the total collapse of several major daily newspapers will wake them up (if even that does). I submit that an awful lot of Americans are simply tired of the newspapers' obvious agendas, as illustrated by the stories above. The New York Times ran 32 consecutive page one stories about Abu Ghraib. Front page, 32 days in a row. But they bury good news about Iraq on page 19 or don't cover it at all.

I used to be a Seattle Times subscriber. I cancelled my subscription for exactly those reasons. I was tired of the way editorial bias kept affecting what news was covered and how it was covered, and I was tired of the overt hostility to religion in general and Christianity in particular. Don't believe me on the hostility angle? I'll give you two movie titles: The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Passion of the Christ. Go search the archives and refresh your memories on how those two movies were covered.

It's nice to see that a lot of other Americans are doing what I did and voting with their wallets. That's the best way to effect change in a capitalist system. So keep up the good work, folks, I want to see those circulation numbers keep going in the right direction - down!

Thanks for listening.