If It Doesn't Bleed Gallons, Don't Bother?

Why is that when a car bomb goes off in Iraq it just gets a quickly little headline, the number of dead, and that's it. Every time a car bomb goes off in Israel we get the cable channels going live with breaking news?

There are some factors at play here that are structural bias. Israel has a bigger media community of its own, so they of course will carry it live and the cable channels can just feed off them for coverage. The second reason is that at this point in time there are fewer bombings in Israel, so when one happens it is more newsworthy.

What may be the biggest structural problem is that no television journalists are really in Iraq on a big scale doing much on the ground reporting. I don't know if I have seen much more than random footage of events in Iraq recently and that is when the journalists are on patrol or escorted by US troops.

Those aside, why is that when multiple car bombs go off on a single day in Iraq we don't get live Baghdad coverage of it? Are we so unphased by 10 killed or 8 killed because we now only get on our ears about terrorist acts that kill in the hundreds? Now, if those 10 or 8 were Americans you get more attention, but now a days even that is not enough.

The news media, ALL if it from FOX to CNN to NBC to Talk Radio, have illustrated their callousness and total attention to ratings (or other agendas), not to journalism. The print media, as usual, has done a better job, but if its not on TV it just doesn't matter to most Americans.