MSM's schoolhouse blindness

Scores of videos like Mr. Goodfellow's offer direct access to all aspects of military service - especially those ignored or cast aside by mainstream media. Troops playing soccer with Iraqi children, hostage rescue missions, shootouts with insurgents and montages put together by wives are just some of the uncensored clips on YouTube.

"If you look nightly on the news, particularly in the last few years, there are so many stories that are negative or that are questioning the military in one way or another, or raising doubts about it," YouTube spokesman Chris Dale said.
"This really gives you an unfiltered look. They're not slickly produced; it's just a very honest and straightforward interpretation of some of the conditions on the ground."

If you didn't get the chance, you should give Kara Rowland's bit on the YouTube Diaries a read, as it outlines well one of the reasons for the growth of non-traditional media into the vacuum created by the overwhelming lack of balance seen by "professional" journalists taken as a whole.

Soak in this cognitive dissonance;

It's not realistic to expect the mainstream media to devote time to human-interest stories when "the majority [of war] is about violence," said Barbie Zelizer, a journalism professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.

"I think it's media's responsibility to reflect the bulk, kind of the core of what's going on," she said of the mainstream media's coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It's not that the media are biased; it's the public isn't particularly supportive of this war so why should the media go and find the one or two videos on YouTube and give them coverage because they give a human aspect?"

Gee Barbie - OK, we'll settle just for the percentage of coverage for the Gun control, gay marriage, oil drilling, and even, yes, war coverage by the MSM is way out of balance compared to the American people.

That is why, in addition to hitting the blogroll here and at MilBlogs, people need to be reading SmallWarsJournal, LongWarJournal/Bill Roggio, and anything by Trotten and Yon.

Barbie's problem is that she does not want to see; she does not want to report; she does not watn to deal with anything that does not match her world view. That, Barbie, is bias.