Network News Retreats from Iraq

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter has a nice piece today on the withdrawal from Iraq. By the networks, that is.

"Quietly, as the United States presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq," Stelter writes.

“The war has gone on longer than a lot of news organizations’ ability or appetite to cover it,” said Jane Arraf [pictured here], a former Baghdad bureau chief for CNN who has remained in Iraq as a contract reporter for The Christian Science Monitor.

If there's a bright spot in all this, it's the fact that coverage of the "forgotten war" in Afghanistan -- and of the slow-mo implosion of Pakistan -- is getting a boost. Perhaps equally important, a new breed of online reporter has stepped up to continue providing coverage of the Iraq war. The Stelter piece prominently quotes über-milblogger Michael Yon as well as Mike Boettcher, a former Baghdad correspondent for NBC News who now reports at NoIgnoring.com.

And of course, we should give props to the Times, which continues to maintain a major bureau in Baghdad. Amid all the gloom over media cutbacks and the death of print, the paper's commitment to covering this story stands out.

[PHOTO: space.coder24.net]