Another Story for the National Media to Ignore

"U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government."

Full story is here.

I have little faith that this story will see the light of day in any Canadian national media.

I think as events continue to unfold we're going to have to get used to the idea that by and large the Canadian national media are becoming more and more parochial on the subject of our involvement in the Afghanistan mission.

In the past weeks there have been several important news stories relevant to the Afghanistan situation from Great Britain and Germany that have gone entirely unremarked by Canadian national media. This one from the USA will in all likelihood go unremarked as well.

Why the media should be choosing insularity in this way is puzzling in a world as inter-connected as ours has become. Perhaps theres an unconscious consensus that citizens who really want to know more can find out on their own online. Then again perhaps the consensus isn't unconscious at all. Perhaps they're just trying to protect some 19th century notion of relevance or turf. Perhaps they just believe that the only useful information relevant to Canadians is information generated from within Canada. I don't know.

I do know that they are wilfully filtering a fair amount of information that comes out of the news media of several of our NATO allies. I know that in each instance the information being filtered is in some way critical of the Afghanistan mission - either it's inception or it's execution. In some cases the information has to do with dropping public support, in some cases flagging military confidence and in some cases rising corruption among either the allies and their commercial partners or the installed Afghanistan government and it's components.

Why, in a world as inter-connected and as supposedly inter-dependent as this would Canada's national media choose to become insular and parochial?

Tis a puzzlement.