IEDs and Crazy Cats: The Connection

The other day I discovered, to my amazement, that my hometown of Fairfield, Connecticut was (albeit briefly) at the very center of the Biggest News Story Ever. The story in question (in its AP incarnation) is entitled "Crazy Cat Terrorizes Connecticut Town." They get bonus points for consonance over at the AP. The essence of the story is that one neighborhood has a very vicious cat in residence, and the town's Animal Control officers have ordered its owner to keep it indoors.

Within 24 hours of its release, the story was everywhere. I saw a segment about it not only on all the local news broadcasts, but every prime-time cable news show as well. And I've recently noticed it popping up internationally, for God's sake, in such bastions of journalistic excellence as The Guardian.

You may stop and say, "Hey, this is standard stuff. Every news show needs its fluff, and people like stories about crazy cats just as much as the regularly scheduled Who Was Jesus? and College Students Drinking More stories." Perhaps. You may also remind me that I promised a connection with IEDs, and here it is.

There's been an ongoing debate about whether the mainstream media is skewing the news from Iraq in a negative direction--why is there coverage of IEDs and not hospital or school openings. I'm going to skirt this debate for the moment, except to say that I hear more about the hospitals and schools Hamas operates than the ones the U.S. is helping with in Iraq.

I recently came across this interesting exchange between CNN's Howard Kurtz and Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe:

In the next segment, [Howard] Kurtz brought aboard Pam Hess of UPI and Richard Wolffe of Newsweek. Kurtz inquired: "Richard Wolffe, the people who complain that the coverage of Iraq is bias -- and there are a lot of them out there, do they want objective reporting?"

Wolffe maintained: "No, they don't. They want to replace one piece of bias with another. And that's what we should know about the sort of bias witch hunt that has been going on, not just about Iraq, but about politics and political reporting in general over the last 18 months or so. If they were defending objective reporting, they would say, let's uphold journalistic standards that many journalists, by and large, want to support and perform and execute every day. In fact, what they're saying is, no, set aside the violence and just deal with the positive things. It's not a reporter's job-"

Kurtz: "I don't think they're saying just deal with the positive aspects."

Wolffe: "They are saying that the balance is wrong and they want to see us doing things that advance a cause. Our job is not to advance a cause. Our job is to report on what's newsworthy. Why do cable shows talk about the murder of pretty young women and not about positive things in life like childbirth or cooking? Why? Because what grabs people's attention is violence and murder. It's a fact of life."

OK, so here's the thesis: journalists should report on what's newsworthy...wait! no! Journalists must report on what grabs people's attention. To not report on the "grippy" stories would be to give in to those who "advance a cause."

So here, it seems, lies the answer: there is room, and room aplenty, for stories of crazed, six-toed cats and their impact on suburbia; but to even acknowledge that there may be some positive side of the Iraq war is entirely out of the question.

Wacky cats.

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Mainstream Media, Media Bias, Iraq, Cat, Connecticut