Last night I heard on NPR news, "Today's headlines... 100 days until the transfer of power in Iraq" (from memory, not an exact quote). So in other words, nothing particular happened in Iraq today, so the story they're running is that something is
going to happen 100 days from now.
What troubles me, as a Buddhist and otherwise, is that plenty of things did happen today, but the headline isn't about that. In fact, I'm sure that plenty of things happened in Iraq today, and anyone in Iraq could tell you that something happened, and perhaps it's something significant - in fact, a glance at the Iraq Coalition Casualty List page shows that quite a few things happened, including several people losing their lives. But that's not as important as noting that something will happen 100 days from now. Today, I presume, we'll hear a story about how the transfer of power in Iraq will happen 99 days from now.
This is what's known as a "countdown" story, and it's related to the "horse race" election story. You know - 21 shopping days til Christmas, 3 weeks until the election in
__, or what have you. It has a twin, the "anniversary" story. One year since the invasion of Iraq, 3 years since 9/11, 100 years since the Wright Brothers' first flight. In essence, these "news" stories are about what did not happen today. They are a message for your ego, telling you that you shouldn't be thinking about where you are now, what you're doing now, what's happening now, but instead you should be sending your mind to another time and place where something else occurred, or is expected to occur.
(I discuss the Buddhist implications of this on my own blog here. For this diary, though, I'm taking a more political track from this point forward.)
What this represents to me is lazy reporting, and lazy editing. In other words, we've already got a particular story in the can, and rather than dig up something that's actually happening, we'll just open the can and microwave this story so it seems hot in time for the newscast.
Let's be clear and fair here: NPR has done some good reporting out of Iraq, they've got good people on the ground and they're chasing leads the old-fashioned way. Why, then, though, are we not given something from those reporters? Nevermind the fact that people died in Iraq today, nevermind that Americans died in Iraq today and that some family may just now be hearing the dreadful news. Nevermind what the soldiers, or the citizens, might have to say today, and nevermind that there might be progress (or lack of progress) in quelling the insurgency, rebuilding the infrastructure, calming the chaos. We're going to take last week's story about the constitution and re-hash it with some new quotes.
And nevermind that Iraq's economic system has been retooled to promote total privatization and globalization in the style of Argentina. And nevermind that the country's internal politics are getting rigged to favor Western interests, and that Iraqis of the future will have to buy their water from Bechtel even if there's a pump-well in their back yard. You won't even hear about those stories on NPR, why? Well, NPR doesn't have time to air every single little story about Iraq. They're too busy using up airtime with canned ones.