The Awful Truth
A Time magazine reporter admits the press actively ignores stories that show American soldiers in a good light:

It's the nature of the business,'' Time's Brian Bennett says. "What gets in the headlines is the American soldier getting shot, not the American soldiers rebuilding a school or digging a well."

The liberal media has basically three templates for stories about the U.S. military in action:
1. American soldiers are incompetent and mucking things up.
2. American soldiers are committing atrocities petit and grande.
3. American soldiers are in a quagmire.

But lately, the disconnect between what American Big Media reporters are reporting from Iraq and what a growing number of on-the-scene bloggers and visiting congresspeople are saying has become so wide that the press is, finally, admitting that the situation is improving in much of Iraq. As that information seeps into the American public's consciousness, watch for President Bush's poll numbers to rise.

[Hat tip: Instapundit, who is all over the story.]

By the way, how bad can things in Iraq be if American soldiers have time to arrange toy collection drives for Iraqi children?

UPDATE: Kevin Drum over at CalPundit says there's no media bias in the reporting from Iraq, and people who say otherwise are people who haven't been there. Of course, Drum hasn't been there, either. And he doesn't see the very evident bias, preferring to consider it regular ol' balanced journalism:

And presumably everyone agrees with Time magazine's Brian Bennett that this really has nothing to do with bias: dramatic events are what the media reports everywhere, not just in Iraq. Their behavior in Baghdad is no different from their behavior in Los Angeles.

The problem, Mr. Drum, is that selectively reporting only bad news because it is "dramatic" is a form of bias that excludes covering the quiet drama of the many good things happening in Iraq - the schools being rebuilt and reopened, for example.

Mr. Drum claims that crying "media bias" is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Perhaps. But denying media bias is the last refuge of the scoundrel whose political agenda - in this case the destruction of the Bush presidency - is being aided by that very media.