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Setting the Tone for the Hunt
10/20/2003

As usual, I'm unusually busy today. However, a thought just came to mind that I wanted to share.

With the media failing to make a major story about revelations of the D.C. sniper's past and probable motivation, with its refusal to admit that it got the pre-war story wrong, the ways in which news outlets frame reality with the facts — even the stories — to which they give play is becoming apparent.

My parents visited this weekend, and for most of it, I had Fox News, which I rarely find time or need to watch, anymore, on in the background. One of the stories on regular rotation involved some shells discovered in Iraq that had an unknown substance in them, which Fox saw as a potential scoop in the search for WMDs. I looked around some of my usual haunts on the Internet and saw nothing. If it was mentioned in the major media, my searches didn't turn it up (on Saturday). That makes the second instance, the first being that smuggler story out of Kuwait, of a potential discovery that I caught only with luck as it flashed in a limited area of the information universe.

Now think back to the D.C. sniper story before Muhammad and Malvo were caught. Actually, think of any high-profile story that involves a search of some kind. Every lead is chased with too much enthusiasm; every possible discovery is headlined as a potential "breakthrough." The authorities are on the case; it's only a matter of time.

In contrast, the search for WMDs has been covered as if their non-existence was a foregone conclusion the moment the statues fell without revealing chemical-warhead missiles hidden underneath. Where's the heat-of-the-chase, quest-for-the-truth coverage? Where are the breathless reports about back-country Iraqis living in trailers who could, in actuality, be the key to cracking the mystery? "He owned a gun and once hit his wife, don't you know; investigators are calling him a 'person of interest' in the search for weapons of mass destruction."

Something tells me that the two stories that I've come across haven't been the only moments at which the world could have held its breath if it had been told about them. You've heard the excuse that the media only appears biased and gloomy because it is attempting to make stories interesting in order to make money? Well, what could be more interesting than the hunt for weapons used for mass murder, weapons that were so precious to a ruthless dictator that he allowed himself to be toppled rather than reveal where they were or where they had been? The story of the embattled U.S. President waiting while inspectors wade through the sands of Iraq.

Yeah, that could have made for some thrilling reading. It still could.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:52 PM EST