Nearly everyone at Antiwar.com receives email that accuses us of not covering the good deeds down in Iraq. We “look only at the negative” or “ignore all the positive.” Financial blogger Barry Ritholtz found a similar email in his inbox recently. He writes of it:
I received an email this weekend.
It’s a photo of a US Servicement holding a little Iraqi girl.
The caption accompanying the photo was oh so very telling
“Why isn’t this all over the news? If he had done something wrong, it surely would be!”
I plan to use Ritholtz’s response from now on:
To answer the emailer’s question, it is not all over the newspapers because its not news. The good guys are supposed to do things like this. Its only news when the bad guys do this. […] No, my dear emailer, you have forgotten who we are and what we are all about. A good deed by a US serviceman is what WE DO ANYWAY. In case you didn’t know, we are the GOOD GUYS. If this not being in a newspaper is what upsets you, than you NO LONGER GET IT. This is what the United States is all about. This is what is expected of us. This is the standard we aspire to. This is who we are.