Unlike the 2,000-Death Count in Iraq, ABC, NBC, PBS, MSNBC Skip 2,000 Marker in Afghanistan

Via Newsbusters: 

On June 13, the CBS Evening News devoted a story by David Martin to the Afghanistan death count reaching 2,000, as Martin interviewed a mother of a fallen Marine. CBS was alone. There was no story last week on the Afghanistan death “milestone” on ABC, NBC, the PBS NewsHour – or even on the MSNBC programs found in Nexis, including Rachel “Our Military’s In a Perilous Drift” Maddow.

But the networks were all more aggressive when the 2,000 mark arrived in Iraq on October 25, 2005. The Big Three networks devoted 14 morning and evening news stories to the death toll from October 24 through the end of October, and another 24 anchor briefs or mentions. They used the number to spell “disaster for this White House.”

Bob Schieffer:

CBS anchor Bob Schieffer delivered only this single sentence [to the elections in Iraq] -- "Iraq's government announced today that voters did approve the country's new constitution in this month's referendum" -- before moving on to a full story about the 2,000th death of U.S. servicemen in Iraq, a piece he could not resist introducing without adding this snide aside: "More than 90 percent of the 2,000 who died in the war have died since the President declared major combat was at an end in May 2003."

Ted Koppel: 

 This was the week, of course, that the death toll of American servicemen and women in Iraq topped 2,000. Statistical markers like that are never a fair way of judging the legitimacy of a war but they seem to have an impact, nevertheless.

Katie Couric:

All right, as if the White House didn't have enough trouble right now, Iraq is still looming. The two--it's going to be 2,000th--we're going to get up to the 2000th death of US servicemen and women in Iraq very soon. I think we're four away from that. Meanwhile, Brent Scowcroft gave some scathing criticism of the Bush administration in this week's New Yorker.

Davide Gregory::

“Criminal charges, a failed nomination to the Supreme Court and a grim milestone in Iraq, 2000 US soldiers killed in action. Perhaps the worst political week of the Bush presidency.”

Mark Shields on PBS:

“We just passed 2,000 killed in Iraq this week, 90 percent killed of them have been killed since the president announced mission accomplished.”

Perhaps because Obama pronounced Afghanistan as the “good war.”  Perhaps because the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is in the Oval Office.  Perhaps because … ah, hell, we all know why.  It’s the reason why there has been no coverage of the Fast and Furious gun running scandal in the media until Obama invoked executive privilege to sustain the cover-up a little longer.  No one reads the newspapers or watches the MSM news shows for news any more.  Today, they are the punch line for a joke.