Becker Posner has a blogpost on the decline of newspapers. This led one commenter to say that what's bearing on national politics in the dominant papers is a lie until proven otherwise. One is reminded of Maliki's defeat in Basra, followed by the collapse of an Iraqi Company in Sadr City but finally there is David Brooks article in the NYTimes on the success of the surge. Sometimes I think it's like reading of the defeat of the Allied forces in WWII by German Arms in hypothetical German newspapers. You'd have articles with headlines like 'German Army takes Stalingrad but communication tenuous,' and 'AngloAmerican Army destroyed at Normandy' but then 'German Army Quits Paris to Save Vichy Government' and, finally, 'Hitler Spurns Russian Immigrants, prefers Early Sainthood.' All of these articles could go in a book 'Disasters of American and Allied Arms' to kind of go with the current reports of disasters in Iraq. Of course going along with this kind of reporting is, for instance, the Dallas Morning News (sorry, registration required) saying that McCain's aide shouldn't say that a terrorist attack would highlight his bosses advantage as a candidate. It's impolite I guess to think of how things could really go wrong.