Harvard Economists: Media Has Effect on Insurgency

That shadowy, vast right-wing conspiracy in the Ivy League has done it again. Economists at Harvard have found a link between negative media coverage of Iraq and an emboldening of insurgents.

Hot Air has more:

Caveats aplenty — the data didn’t include Baghdad, there’s no way to tell if attacks increased because of the rhetoric or were just re-timed to coincide with it — but to no one’s surprise except possibly the left’s, “U.S. out of Iraq” does indeed create an incentive for jihadis to try to push the U.S. out of Iraq.

Allahpundit wonders if the media will report on "this rather media-unfriendly finding" or if it creates an "incentive for the press to at least include more pro-war voices in its coverage?"

I'd probably answer no on both counts. After all MRC/NB's Rich Noyes has found that good news in Iraq usually equates to less news coverage of Iraq overall. A study that runs counter to the media's preferred template will not get the time of day. Plus between Eliot Spitzer and the ongoing Democratic presidential primary race, the media have all but forsaken anything of substance in Iraq reporting.