Sirota Smacks the Press on Iraq, they Whine back: It's Hard Work....

Bad enough when the President whined it last fall during the debates. Now, that's the mainstream media's tune about covering the war in Iraq. As we noted below, Iraq is out of control.

David Sirota has done a masterful job on this issue today. On his blog earlier today, Sirota smacked ABCNews "The Note" today for saying in their snarky, "it's not easy being the cool kids" way that the self-designated elite in DC, the so-called "Gang of 500," doesn't have all that much time for the war in Iraq anymore:

We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraq is truly staggering.

And/but we are sort of resigned to the Notion that it simply isn't going to break through to American news organizations, or, for the most part, Americans.

And, clearly, it simply isn't easy being the Gang of 500. It's hard work.

Later in the day, Sirota did a follow up onThe Huffington Post, because the media have been calling him to whine and complain. Sirota had some advice:

For any reporters reading this, here's the deal: As my dad always said, your work is supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it (and granted, some of the no-talent clowns on TV prove, unfortunately, that everyone is doing it). The fact that Iraq is a "hard" story means you need to work extra hard to cover it - not simply ignore the story altogether, and create/justify an insulated Washington, D.C. conventional wisdom that says no one cares. If you spend more than 6 seconds outside the beltway echo chamber, you'd know damn well that people do.

This is a truly sad state of affairs that should make serious journalists from an earlier era (such as Walter Cronkite) sick to their stomach.

As usual, David Sirota is right.

For Christ Sakes, Gang of 500 or MSM, whatever the hell you are...get over yourselves. Stop worrying about getting a nickname from Bush and start asking hard questions. Sirota's work today is incredibly enlightening about the MSM. There are some fine reporters on the ground in Iraq. But their work only matters if the people they work for back home remember they are there. Kinda like the way we should be remembering that there are 140,000 troops over there -- and they are getting killed and injured every day.