Michael Yon doesn't have an answer (HT to NewsBuster reader "acumen") as to why Old Media won't cover the Al Qaeda massacre of a small village near Baqubah, Iraq that he reported earlier this week (related NewsBusters posts are here and here):
Coordinates to the area of the gravesites are MC 679 381.
In my dispatch, I reported that six people were killed, but mentioned that Iraqi soldiers were still digging out bodies when I left. A few hours ago, Colonel Hiduit put the number at 10-14, and said the search for bodies had ended. I made video of the graves, bodies and of interviews with Iraqi and American soldiers while we still were at the scene and have been working to make material from this available on this website.
..... But for those publications who actually had people embedded in Baqubah when the story first broke and still failed to cover it, their malaise is inexplicable. I do not know why all failed to report the murders and booby-trapped village: apparently no reporters bothered to go out there, even though it’s only about 3.5 miles from this base. Any one of the reporters currently in Baqubah could still go to these coordinates and follow his or her nose and find the gravesites.
Thus far, among major media outlets, only Fox News, which ran about half of Yon's dispatch and linked to it, has noted the report's existence. This search on "Baqubah" done at about 10 PM ET on July 4 confirms the non-coverage (link is to the second page of results; the first page of the Google News result erroneously indicates that there are 568 results when there are only 20).
Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds received Yon's answer in an e-mail from a person he describes as "a journalist whose name you'd recognize." Consider it the Old Media bias e-mail of the year until further notice:
Yon's story doesn't get attention because it is humiliating.
It is humiliating because it is obvious that we media – and our allies in the state department, the legal trade, the NGOs, the Democratic Party, the UN, etc., - can't do squat about such determined use of force.
Our words, images, arguments and skills can't stop the killing. Only the rough soldiers and their guns can solve the problem, and we won't admit that fact because the admission would weaken our influence and our claim to social status.
So we pretend Yon’s massacre – and the North Korean killing fields, the Arab treatment of women, the Arab hatred of Israel, etc. - doesn’t exist, and instead focus our emotions and attention on the somewhat-bad domestic things that we can 'fix' with our DC-based allies. Things such as Abu Ghraib, wiretapping, etc. When we 'fix' them, then we get status, applause, power, new jobs, ego, etc.
Please don’t be surprised. We media are an interest group not much different from the automakers, the unions, and the farmers.
Just once, I'd like to see Old Media types rounded up, like residents living near Holocaust sites after Germany was liberated in World War II, and forced to look at the kinds of things real reporters like Yon unearth. Reynolds' correspondent leaves the impression that they would still do the "la la la" thing -- but it would be worth it to demonstrate to the world just how far gone they really are.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
