in continuing to foot the growing bill for covering the war, when reduced violence reduces the number of easy-to-cover-stories, in the sense that they can be produced via a well-worn, time honored template, rinse, lather, repeat, but instead require some degree of creativity. By 2 weeks before the 2008 election, coverage of Iraq had plummeted to a mere 1 percent of all stories, across not only broadcast TV, but also cable, newspapers, radio, and online news sources. See Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, PEJ News Coverage Index, October 6–12, 2008, available from journalism.org, www.journalism.org/node/13204.
106. Dan Harris, "News Headlines," ABC World News Tonight Sunday, April 17, 2005, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, www.lexisnexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T5381421803&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=376&resultsUrlKey=29_T5381421806&cisb=22_T5381421805&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8277&docNo=400.
107. In fairness, the press is often limited by the information provided by the military, which is intentionally kept to the bare minimum to deny the enemy what could be its only means of battle damage assessment. While the desire to keep critical information out of enemy hands is certainly understandable, in a war where information is itself so often a key battleground, the military needs to reevaluate how this is done. In earlier conflicts there were no opportunity costs—nothing to balance against the benefit of withholding information. Today there is. The benefits of releasing information on casualties may not be enough to outweigh the risks, but the calculation needs to be made, and it may be the case that more information ought to be released earlier, or that mechanisms to release information without doing harm can be explored. I discuss these trade-offs at greater length in Cori E. Dauber, "Winning the Battle But Losing the War: the Relationship Between the Media Coverage of Iraq and Public Support," May, 2005, Chapel Hill, NC, unpublished ms.
108. It should be noted, however, that reports of American combat casualties per se is not what reduces public support for a given military operation, even though that is widely assumed to be the case, particularly by the press. Support will hold so long as the public continues to believe there is hope for the success of the
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