Categorical Aperitif

I'd figured that the new Winter Soldier hearings wouldn't get much mainstream press attention, but I didn't think they'd be ignored this thoroughly:

Although Winter Soldier was held just outside the nation’s capital, it was almost entirely ignored by the American corporate media. A search on the Lexis database found that no major television network or cable news network even mentioned Winter Soldier over the weekend, neither did the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times or most other major newspapers in the country. The editors of the Washington Post chose to cover Winter Soldier but placed the article in the local section.

For curiosity's sake, twice over the last weekend I browsed the websites of the major TV "news" channels; all I found were links to the same lonely WaPo story, and those were only at CBS and MSNBC. I found nothing at ABC, CNN, or PBS's NewsHour. From the good NPR Check I find that All Things Considered had a story on Sunday, but listening to it, I find that it's all of three minutes long and well sanitized, with examples that seem carefully chosen not to offend: a soldier says that rules of engagement allowed firing on vehicles that strayed too close to convoys, and another says that a prisoner was denied food, water, and sleep for three days. Gosh. Meanwhile, over at Democracy Now! and other outlets, there's testimony about terrorizing families, indiscriminate shooting of civilians, indiscriminate firing of machine guns into buildings, etc. etc. etc. But I guess that basic honesty about such things would cut into tote bag sales.

Oh, that liberal media.