It's the media's fault

The Associated Press focuses only on the bad news from Iraq, showing another clear example of how the media is losing the war there:

Assailants slit the throats of a mother and her three children Wednesday in southern Iraq, where the family had fled to escape threats that they had cooperated with the Americans.

The mother's sister was also slain in the savage attack, which occurred in an apartment in the southern city of Basra, police said.

Just the bad news up front. But then we get a tiny, tiny taste of the good news from Iraq:

Five other family members were rescued before they bled to death.

It's all about the five people who died, but the five people who didn't quite die barely get a mention. Is this the fair, neutral and objective reporting that the media claim to prize? Apparently not, because the AP immediately dives back into the bad news:

Officials said the family had fled Baghdad for Basra after receiving threats because they had cooperated with U.S. forces. The officials gave no further details and spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals by sectarian militias that have infiltrated Basra's police.

Well, helllooooooo! Why not emphasize those members of Basra's police who do not belong to the sectarian militias? They might even be the majority of the cops. Instead we focus only on those bad eggs.

The only thing missing from the top of this story is the hint of impending civil war. These guys even effectively claim that, in June, as many Iraqi civilians died in violence, as Americans died in the Twin Towers? Stephen Colbert has such an accurate sense of truthiness: Reality must have a liberal bias.