I haven’t been reading the Washington Post’s 29-part series on IEDs in Iraq. To give the benefit of the doubt, I’ll stipulate that they had this series in the works before the situation in Iraq began to improve. In other words, it’s old news. The newspaper has apparently made a decision to skimp on new news (or what’s usually defined as news). Powerline notes:
“Stanley Kurtz at NRO’s Corner notes that yesterday’s Washington Post ran three stories about Iraq on the front page, yet buried a report about the substantial decline in U.S. and Iraqi civilian deaths on page 14. When the death count goes up, that’s almost always front page news at the Post.
“The trifecta of Iraq items that made the Post’s front page yesterday were a story on roadside bombs (the third in a series of reports) centered on the top half of the page and highlighted in red; allegations of killings by the security firm Blackwater; and a poll showing that most Americans want a cut in funds to Iraq. As Kurtz suggests, substantial positive progress in Iraq is probably a more important development than any of these three other stories. Thus, ‘the relative placement of these stories by the Post is profoundly biased and misleading.’ But ‘the Post seems more interested in fighting our political battle over the Iraq than in reporting on it.'”