Greatly Exaggerated?

Were early reports of civil war and attacks against mosques throughout Iraq greatly exaggerated by the media which didn't bother to actually confirm the carnage?

That's what Greyhawk is wondering. There's good reason to wonder.

As the New York Post wonders today, big media makes lots of editorial choices about the kinds of stories that it runs, where to place the emphasis, and consumers also make choices.

When they find that the media outlets aren't providing all the news, or only one side, the consumers go elsewhere. To blogs. Or talk radio.

When the media gets stories wrong, places emphasis based on preconceived notions of what is going on instead of what is actually going on, people begin to notice.

Are the big media outlets getting the story wrong on Iraq? Are they so wedded to the idea of failing in Iraq, that they're pushing the meme that the country is headed for civil war, despite the fact that the situation is unclear.

A Google News search of iraq civil war turns in 11,700 results. Does this mean that all the results are saying that there's a civil war? Not in the slightest. It's just a concept that many outlets, including the International Herald Tribune are floating out there to describe the violence that broke out after the Golden Dome mosque was destroyed by Islamic terrorists. Others are using those terms to flatly deny the fact that this is a civil war.

The views are wildly divergent - one plays to traditional notions of civil war - widespread violence tearing a country apart, while the other says that the violence is largely confined to certain parts of the country, with only small groups seeking to spur the violence, and that most of the people in power are working to overcome this latest violence and keep the country together.

UPDATE:
As if on cue, the New York Times wonders what civil war could look like.

A first question for the United States if a general collapse of order seemed to be in the offing would be what to do with its 130,000 troops in Iraq.

"We would probably have to get out of the way," said Larry Diamond, who advised the American occupation in Baghdad in 2004 and is now a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

"We wouldn't have nearly enough troops to quell the violence at that point. At a minimum, we'd have to pull back to certain military bases and try to keep working the politics."

One could almost feel the glee among the folks at the NYT newsroom who are awaiting the moment when the last helicopter takes off from the Green Zone as the city descends into chaos. They're waiting for US failure. No, that's not quite right. They're hoping for US failure. (Hat Tip: Bob the Builder at LGF.)

UPDATE:
Iraq Bloggers Central rounds up some of the basic theories on who blew up the Golden Dome Mosque, the rationales behind each, and who the leading acolytes of each.

And the fact remains that the media repeated claims made by one group or another about the widespread nature of the violence without actually going to confirm it themselves. The Defense Department briefings suggest that the violence was highly focused and limited.

But today, as of now, seven attacks across Iraq that resulted in damage to mosques; two Sunni imams murdered and one sheikh murdered; and then other less significant attacks. We've seen some drive-by attacks -- people driving by mosques, sticking a weapon out the window and firing rounds at the mosque, with no resulting damage. But that's where we are.

So we're not seeing civil war igniting in Iraq. We're not seeing 77, 80, 100 mosques damaged. We're not seeing death in the streets. We're seeing a confident, capable Iraqi government using their capable Iraqi security force to calm the storm that was inflamed by a horrendous, horrific terrorist attack yesterday against the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

Seven attacks is far different than 150+ mosques destroyed. In fact, that's about the same number of churches torched in Alabama over the past several weeks in a string of criminal attacks that have yet to solved. It continues to be apparent that the media's sense of perspective is quite distorted, taking every attack and magnifying it as a disaster that may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Yet, reports from Michael Totten paint a very different picture (just run though his blog and you'll see what I mean).