MoveOn.Org vs. Liberal Media Reality On 2,000 "Milestone" Coverage of Iraq

Gary Hall passed along yesterday that MoveOn.org is telling their members on their E-mail list that the media are failing to give enough publicity to the 2,000-dead "milestone" in Iraq:

"Dear MoveOn member, Yesterday we reached the sad milestone of 2,000 killed in Iraq. But for the most part, the national media are ignoring this tragic milestone."

MRC's Rich Noyes rebutted this strange idea yesterday (with data from Brent Baker's CyberAlert) in a Media Reality Check. While the networks downplayed the Iraqi government's announcement that 79 percent of Iraqis had voted in favor of a new constitution, they played up the 2,000 "milestone."

Rich noted that his new study of nine months of evening-news Iraq stories showed "the networks had already produced 400 evening news stories noting America’s war casualties, far more than those discussing episodes of heroism on the part of those same troops. Indeed, on Tuesday morning only FNC’s Fox & Friends and CNN’s American Morning showcased Army Specialist Darrell Green, who thwarted the suicide bomber who tried to destroy Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel on Monday, saving many lives. Green’s captain told CNN that while 'this was definitely a large explosion...this was a success story thanks to soldiers like Specialist Green.' ABC, CBS and NBC didn’t interview Specialist Green or mention his heroics. Evidently, they don’t consider him to be as newsworthy as the 2,000 victims of Bush’s war."

MoveOn.Org was trying to get its members to attend anti-war vigils and fund a new ad asserting the war is pointless: "How many more?" MoveOn, of course, not only opposed the Iraq war, but also the war to capture al-Qaeda and overturn their Taliban hosts in Afghanistan.