Good news is no news

Howard Kurtz should be given a months tax-free for the service to his nation. Via Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters, Kurtz just nails Robin Wright of the Washington Post and Barbara Starr of CNN.

KURTZ: Robin Wright, should that decline in Iraq casualties have gotten more media attention?

WRIGHT: Not necessarily. The fact is we're at the beginning of a trend -- and it's not even sure that it is a trend yet. There is also an enormous dispute over how to count the numbers. There are different kinds of deaths in Iraq.

There are combat deaths. There are sectarian deaths. And there are the deaths of criminal -- from criminal acts. There are also a lot of numbers that the U.S. frankly is not counting. For example, in southern Iraq, there is Shiite upon Shiite violence, which is not sectarian in the Shiite versus Sunni. And the U.S. also doesn't have much of a capability in the south.

So the numbers themselves are tricky.
....
KURTZ: But let's say that the figures had shown that casualties were going up for U.S. soldiers and going up for Iraqi civilians. I think that would have made some front pages.

STARR: Oh, I think inevitably it would have. I mean, that's certainly -- that, by any definition, is news. Look, nobody more than a Pentagon correspondent would like to stop reporting the number of deaths, interviewing grieving families, talking to soldiers who have lost their arms and their legs in the war. But, is this really enduring progress?

We've had five years of the Pentagon telling us there is progress, there is progress. Forgive me for being skeptical, I need to see a little bit more than one month before I get too excited about all of this.

Dead Americans = Exciting stuff!!
America's success = Notsomuch.

Never knew she was so into snuff films. As if you needed to hear it from their own mouths - though it is nice to confirm what we see every day. You can see some of Wright's answer (video available here).