Pointing out what is and isn't "newsworthy" in the MSM

By way of Lorie Byrd of Polipundit comes this portion of a Ralph Peters article:

Sit back and press the memory button. Remember how, in the wake of 9/11, the experts warned that we’d suffer devastating casualties when our “soft” troops came up against the “battle-hardened” Taliban? We were assured our efforts would fail, that we’d wind up as badly burned as the Soviets and Brits before us; the entire country would take up arms against any foreign invaders.

Didn’t happen. Our military and the CIA delivered a swift, stunning triumph. And our troops are actually welcome.

No one held those errant experts accountable. Now they’re back, pouncing on every scrap of bad news in the hope they’ll be able to say, “We told you so.”

And here’s how our media deal with the undeniable progress made in Afghanistan:

Tens of thousands of girls enrolled in schools? Who cares. Peace in most of the country? Boring.

Democratic elections? Non-story. Economic progress? Less than a non-story.

A construction boom in Kabul? About time journalists had a nice hotel. Afghan troops defending their elected government? Zero interest, dude.

Sixteen GIs lost in a helicopter shot down by terrorists? Now THAT’S news.

It is news, of course. We mourn the loss of every one of our service members. And while every American casualty, colonel or corporal, counts equally, the loss of a team of Navy Seals is an operational blow. We want to know what happened.

The problem is the imbalance in the reporting. My friends who serve or served in Afghanistan are bewildered by the only-bad-news-counts coverage. By any objective measure, Afghanistan’s an incredible, they-said-it-couldn’t-be-done success story. But we only hear that the Taliban is back.

Lorie then points out: "One of the main foreign policy positions of John Edwards during the 2004 primary was that Afghanistan was a mess."
Hmmm...I'll bet that if a Republican had said that, the MSM would be rubbing his or her nose in it.