There were 5 military deaths reported in Iraq from last week.
Members of their team will note their passing.
Their team is not a network news team. Their loss will be felt away from the cameras and celebrity talking heads.
Fathers' Day will be a difficult time for 5 more families from now on, to add to some of the 4,100 families for whom it may now be a terrible day.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/...
The media, except for Stephanopoulos today, largely ignored them.
But even on his show, they got mentioned after Russert's passing.
The "media giant" who passed away this week inadvertantly supplied a more touching and meaningful distractcion from those other deaths.
"Missing Blondes" has become so recognized for its purpose that the news media are now gunshy about adopting a new one. It is hard not to conclude that the televised portion of the Russert family loss has become an excerise in excess and banality.
The fact that the departed news giant was, like it or not, part of the overall news media "failure" as Scott McClellan might say,
or part of an orchestrated campaign to not challenge a regime with a war agenda, as Noam Chomsky might say..
remains reasonable to assert.
The wounds are just as fresh, some fresher, for military families in this war who never had the income, connections, baseball seats or network promotional departments enhancing their "gravitas".
The Fathers' Days that are ruined by stoploss, repeat tours and extensions are in fact more touching.
Something very very wrong happened in Americas press and television new system after 9/11.
It seemed to concede the point that something very dark, very big, and very violent was coming.
That is was manipulated and misdirected, oddly towards countries of more "energy" interest than terrorism interest is for you to consider.
The giants of the news media are more or less culpable than its foot soldiers?
Sensitivity about the recently departed is a nice notion. Having your death reported is nice too I guess.
Can you name the men on Stephanopoulos's military roll call today?
Were any more fallen today..who got no "news time" because the news has its one topic for today?
The various diaries on the Russert passing and how it best be noted are filling with emotional responses that seem to overlook and forgive too easily the obvious. The media "failure" could not have occured without the failure of its leadership.