Off Message - The War That Isn't

by William Powers

Sat. Feb. 16, 2008


At Google News one morning this week, these three headlines appeared under Top Stories: "GM Has Loss of $722 Million on North America Costs" (595 related articles); "Obama Looks for Momentum in Va., Md., D.C." (4,237 related articles); and "Press Urges East Timor Unity" (2,919 related articles).

As frequent Google News visitors know, its computer-generated menu of highly trafficked stories can be weird and seemingly random. Obscure stories from sites you've never heard of (eFluxMedia?) will sometimes play large, while major stories from big, brand-name sites are nowhere to be seen.

Still, Google News strikes me as a good basic barometer of what the human race is buzzing about at any given moment. And what's interesting these days is how little we care anymore, newswise, about a story that used to be a global obsession: the war in Iraq.

On the morning in question, of the three dozen stories featured on Google News, none was about the war. In the World category, the big story was political turmoil in Kenya. Under U.S., it was the Chinese espionage case involving a former Boeing engineer. The list of people "In the News" included Amy Winehouse, Roy Scheider, Richard Zednik, and Warren Buffett but nobody linked to the war -- unless you count Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain.

It's like that all across the media. Journalists are still in Iraq, and although their numbers have dwindled dramatically over the years, they produce a steady stream of coverage that's widely available. The Vietnam War famously invaded America's living rooms. Today digital technologies can bring a war into every corner of our lives.In a time of iPhones and bathroom-mirror TVs, one might expect the Iraq conflict, one of the more momentous events of this period, to be with us every waking moment.

It isn't. Whether this is because news outlets aren't playing the story prominently, or because most people have simply lost interest, is hard to say. The media can lead the public to a story, but they can't make people stay forever. This war is five years old, and the violence is down. In recent weeks, U.S. media outlets have been devoting just 2 percent of their coverage to Iraq, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Meanwhile, the public's interest in war news recently hit an all-time low, with just 23 percent of Americans following Iraq "very closely." Which is the chicken, and which is the egg?

It's not at all unusual lately to pick up a large metropolitan newspaper and find that there is nothing -- zero -- on the front page about a war in which nearly 4,000 Americans have died. Even when there is a story, be it about the latest suicide bomb or a broader piece on the status of the conflict, it gets lost in the noise of other news.

Obama and the Clintons. The mortgage crisis. Sports. The Hollywood writers' strike. The Clintons. The weather. Obama. Celebrities in trouble. Obama. Your health.

Some of this, including the bulk of campaign "news," is lightweight stuff next to the war's inescapable gravity. But precisely because the war is so heavy, and we're all so tired of it, there's a why-bother feeling. Unless you have a loved one in Iraq, it's easy to go through the day forgetting there's a war at all.

And that's why it has faded out as news. The war lacks immediacy because there hasn't been a very high price to pay at home. There is no draft, no rationing of food, energy, or other resources, as there was in World War II. And no sense of fear or desperation.

In 1942, as that war was raging, a book came out by the great food writer M.F.K. Fisher. It was called How to Cook a Wolf, not because it offered that particular recipe but because food was short and Americans were worried that the wolf was at the door. Fisher wanted them to know that they could be resilient and get by on very little.

For Iraq to return to the top of the news would require a wolf. And I don't see one coming.

 

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