Television was presenting the war as great entertainment, a glorified video game, and the Free Press wanted to grab a share of this boom market. Knowing that Detroit had the largest Iraqi-American population in the nation, I suggested to editors that it might be important to find out how they saw the war. I interviewed some local Chaldeans and wrote a story. Some see this as an example of how the corporate media run in lockstep with the U.S. government. There's some truth to that.
War sells papers.
War grabs viewers. This is the bottom line. Having been for 31 months a member of a group that has been stigmatized, ignored and misrepresented by Free Press bosses, I share with Iraqui-Americans an appreciation of how the media exclude inconvenient views.