Media Coverage Of The War In Afghanistan

Are The Conflicts In Afghanistan Stealth Conflicts?
-- State Failure Blog

I remembered this piece from the New York Times today - at the time it was published (June, 2008), it looked at how correspondents saw the difficulties of covering important conflicts that the public is not necessarily interested in, and which the media therefore doesn't necessarily look to cover, either. This is what it said about the coverage of Afghanistan by the three major US networks, CBS, NBC and ABC:

"Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has increased slightly this year, with 46 minutes of total coverage year-to-date compared with 83 minutes for all of 2007. NBC has spent 25 minutes covering Afghanistan, partly because the anchor Brian Williams visited the country earlier in the month. Through Wednesday, when an ABC correspondent was in the middle of a prolonged visit to the couMntry, ABC had spent 13 minutes covering Afghanistan. CBS has spent eight minutes covering Afghanistan so far this year."

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My Comment: One of the reasons why I started this blog was to cover the wars and conflicts that Big Media usually fails to cover. I do this by relying on wire services to inform me of a conflict, and the regions bloggers to provides the details. Conflicts like The Congo are hard to cover .... but one can always someone who is there who is able to report the news.