Iraq death toll is page 9 news in Milwaukee

When the death toll of American service members in Iraq reached 2,000 last week, the nation's' newspapers gave the story prominent play, despite the Pentagon's attempts to downplay it, the NY Times reports. In most papers, like the Omaha World Herald, at right,it was a page one story.

But not in Milwaukee, where it was back on page 9. Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine writes:

MJS Downplays Iraq Again

It was front-page news in major newspapers Thursday that 2,000 Americans have now been killed in Iraq. The Journal Sentinel, however, put good news about the Iraq constitution on page one that day and buried the 2,000 deaths milestone on page nine.

The United States has been averaging about 17 deaths per week. The New York Times did a short profile of all 2,000 people killed, which includes 47 from Wisconsin. We’ve suffered a higher percentage of deaths per total population than many states.

Murders and war casualties are high-drama subjects that can sell newspapers. Many readers, whatever their stand on the war, would be interested in those Wisconsinites who have given their lives in this conflict. Few, by contrast, are likely to care about the nuances of a foreign constitution. So what explains this news judgment by JS editors?

On Sunday, JS Editorial Page Editor O. Ricardo Pimentel wrote a long column explaining how the paper editorialized regarding the now-invalidated justifications for invading Iraq. It was an odd performance, given that these editorials were written under Pimentel’s predecessor, Mike Ruby. Ruby struck me as a moderate conservative, while Pimentel is a liberal. Yet here was Pimentel doing his best to justify the past editorials, under the headline “Our editorials repeated what we now know to be wrong.”

Of course, the JS editorial page was no more wrong than others across America. We now know that New York Times reporter Judith Miller was way too close to Bush administration neoconservatives and eagerly reported some of their inaccurate claims justifying the Iraq invasion. The Times, in fact, ran a huge correction for how it covered the rationale for invading Iraq. But that mistake didn’t just affect readers of The Times. Its impact was huge, because most newspapers, including the Journal Sentinel, rely on The Times for much of their national and international coverage.

You could hardly expect the Journal Sentinel to apologize for the inaccuracy of syndicated coverage it published on Iraq. But at what point will it decide to serve readers and stop downplaying the bad news on the war?