Tuning Out the Dead.

Dover, Delaware, is home to the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs--the largest U.S. Department of Defense Mortuary. It is where America brings its dead soldiers home. Normally, seven people work at the centre; since March 2003, when the Iraq war began, there have been as many as 200 on staff. On May 1, 2003 George W. Bush declared major combat operations over--but in the mortuary, aluminum cases keep arriving. The networks may be denied access to some of those telling pictures of the dead arriving back in the U.S., but even if they had them, one wonders whether they would give the story of Americans dying in Iraq any more prominence. There seems to be a certain uneasiness about the Iraq issue that may be due to something else. Viewers are shying away from news: it is happening across the continent, across the networks. There has been a certain redefinition of news in the two years since The September 11, 2001 terror attacks: some things don't seem as important as they once did, after witnessing the events and aftermath of that day. These are challenging times for the media: stories are more complex, more international, and more expensive to cover, but the onus remains on reporters to find new ways to tell the ones that are important.