Sense of media proportion: War vs. Tabloid stories

For the past couple days, Russia has invaded Georgia, and only now agreed to a truce. It remains to be seen if it will hold. Reportedly, hundreds have been killed.

But what are the networks running in America? CNN and Fox News channels are practically running 24 hour coverage of John Edward's admission of infidelity, and the missing Caylee Anthony case. The first is a very minor story (except for the media's initial blackout on it) and there's simply nothing to report on the second. I have enormous sympathy for a missing child, but there is nothing new to report. Therefore, nothing justifies running coverage around the clock, filling the airtime with one endless speculation after another. Nancy Grace is obsessed with it to the exclusion of everything else.

I think slaughter in a country that might touch off a much wider war is a far more important story. In my military course here at Fort Huachuca, AZ, we have students here from Georgia, some worried sick about their families back home and wondering when they will be recalled.

There are parallels, in Russian history. Not in Chechnya, which was a breakaway province, but rather in the disastrous 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland, which cost Russia hundreds of thousands of lives and pushed Finland into the German camp during WWII. History may be repeating itself.