Without Bush, media lose interest in war caskets

The hypocrisy of the left-leaning media is shown again in a wonderful article by Byron York in the Washington Examiner. He starts the article with the following:

Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He then quotes Joe Biden and explains that the Obama administration changed the policy in April of this year. The press rushed in to cover the first arrivals but quickly tired of the story.

In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.

But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. "It's really fallen off," says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. "The flurry of interest has subsided."

The amount of coverage this has received in September is abysmal. No TV. Only one reporter present when allowed. York explains it this way.

On Sept. 2, when the casket bearing the body of Marine Lance Cpl. David Hall, of Elyria, Ohio, arrived at Dover, there was just one news outlet -- the Associated Press -- there to record it. The situation was pretty much the same when caskets arrived on Sept. 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 22, 23 and 26. There has been no television coverage at all in September.

Could it be that the press has lost interest since there is a Democrat in the White House and the casualties are mounting? Nah..... they are objective journalists. That couldn't possibly be the explanation.