COMM 317: Now this ...

Some numbers, and a question below that relates to your term papers ...

Here's a report in today's Washington Post on a recent Pew Research Center poll that shows little public knowledge of U.S. casualties in Iraq and less coverage of the ongoing war there:

Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.

There's a real chicken-and-egg question here. Has awareness dropped because coverage slacked off? Or did coverage fall off because interest in the story was slipping in readership surveys? Some more numbers:

Related Pew surveys have found that the number of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined this year, along with professed public interest. "Coverage of the war has been virtually absent," said Pew survey research director Scott Keeter, totaling about 1 percent of the news hole between Feb. 17 and 23.

The Iraq-associated median for 2007, he said, was 15 percent of all news stories, with major spikes when President Bush announced a "surge" in forces in January of that year and when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, testified before Congress in September.

And a few more numbers (which I think I'd better give to you without any comment on my part):

Compared with those Americans surveyed who correctly identified U.S. casualties at around 4,000 (3,975 as of yesterday morning, according to the Pentagon), 84 percent identified Oprah Winfrey as the talk-show host supporting Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) for the Democratic presidential nomination, and 50 percent knew that Hugo Ch¿vez is president of Venezuela.

And now, the question:

What does all this have to do with our term papers? Which came first: The chicken or the egg? What would Jeremy Bentham think of this situation? What might the media do to serve the greatest good for the greatest number? What, if anything, would Kant counsel? What would Aristotle say?