Friday, May 18, 2007

BANNING THE BAD NEWS

UPDATE : Journalists urge Maliki to stop limiting the media.

Related :
- No photos allowed after Iraqi blasts
- Pentagon Blocks MySpace and YouTube
Older :
- U.S. officials exclude car bombs in touting drop in Iraq violence
- Iraq refuses to provide civilian casualty figures to U.N.

For years we have witnessed the war advocates complain that the press was not covering the "good news" coming out of Iraq.

Never mind that whatever minimal amount of good news that was coming out of Iraq was overshadowed by the tremendously large amount of bad news coming out of Iraq

Now apparently if the media is not willing to ignore the bad news coming out if Iraq the government will try to force them - by not allowing photos or video after bombs then refusing to include car bomb victims in the official "casualty figures" aka DEATH TOLL.

... But what good are "casualty figures" when the Iraqi government actually refuses to provide those figures? Even if the government produced the figures, the figures would lie because victims of car bombings would not even be included.

It makes it even easier to control the news coming out of Iraq when you prevent the American troops from being able to access MySpace or YouTube to share their experiences.

I sense a slow and subtle attempt by both the US and Iraqi governments to control the information coming out of Iraq.

If there is not any good news coming out of Iraq they will try to block the bad news by banning photos and releasing misleading casualty figures.

To display that progress is being made they will force the figures to lie by not including certain types of attacks in the violence.