Two of the best tools for interpreting the news:
1) Ask, what if the shoe were on the other foot? When you see an attack on some organization or person for a comment or opinion implicitly or explicitly regarded as "beyond the pale," ask yourself, would this story be played this way if the target was on the other side politically? Numerous examples could be cited, but that's for another day. I want to get on to the second helpful tool.
2) Ask yourself, what news is not getting a big play in the media, or is being under-reported? This always makes me think of the famous forensic shrewdness of Sherlock Holmes when he helped solve a murder case by noting the dog that did not bark in the night. The significance in that case--and in many instances of newsworthy importance--was what didn't happen. Very often, what doesn't get reported or emphasized in daily reporting is what history will judge most consequential.
When it became clear that the Berlin War was coming down and the end of the Communist empire was coming to an end, there was widespread surprise. Few had predicted that such a thing would happen in their lifetimes. (Two that did were Herman Kahn, founder of Hudson Institute, and Ronald Reagan.) The stories of Soviet collapse ultimately did make the news, of course, but hardly anyone bothered to show that the decades-old peace movement in Europe and the U.S., with its warnings of nuclear doom and recommendations of unilateral disarmament, had now been discredited and effectively decommissioned. If you thought that the only way to a peaceful future was to "converge" with the Soviets, as the Left had long argued, then a surprising capitulation by the USSR was not cause for dancing in the streets. It was cause for a kind of sullen and unreflective silence. But instead of investigating that defeat for the Left, most news organizations--themselves gulled for years by the peaceniks--simply ignored the topic.
My current prospect for relatively under-reported news is the apparent disintegration of the Al Qaeda campaign in Iraq and the world-wide improvement of the war against Islamist terroists.
The U.S.-led Coalition troops during the Surge have greatly diminished the effectiveness of Al Qaeda . Some Sunni insurgent groups have come over to the Coalition or are inert. Most importantly, the pro-Iranian Shia "Mahdi" militia is both fractured and increasingly unpopular among the Shiites themselves.
The story of opposition to the U.S. Coalition and to any non-terrorist government in Iraq has been a complex one and it is apparent that the Bush Administration didn't understand that complexity going in. Nonetheless, the situation on the ground seems to be improving for real. Even with more U.S. troops exposed to danger under the Surge, U.S. combat deaths are down by half over the past six months. So are civilian Iraqi deaths. Civic life and business are getting better.
This is really a big story. We know it largely through the Internet. You wouldn't know it from most MSM news coverage, but you can tell it from the way that the presidential candidates are reacting. Suddenly, the issue of immediate withdrawal is not discussed, but only the question of how and when to acknowledge victory and withdraw in stages. The under-reported but real story is partly responsible for the decline in the prospects of Senator Barack Obama, the viable candidate most invested in a pullout strategy. Perversely, it also may be hurting the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani, since he has been seen to some extent as the most outspoken proponent of seeing the war through. Now that position is almost a consensus on the GOP side, making other issues that are less advantageous to him seem more important.
But the political impact is not the true significance of the War in Iraq, in any case. What may be happening is that America's often stumbling, but consistently firm pursuit of the war against Islamist terrorists is emerging as a possible success, if we will only persevere. It won't be fast or even complete. There will be setbacks. But if we can win in Iraq, even to the point that a non-terror regime that is not actively hostile to the U.S., prevails, it will be a victory globally. That has enormous and hopeful consequences for world security and economic, and even environmental, progress.
It was asserted by Osama Bin Laden only a few years ago that the United States lacks tenacity and, thus, our will can be broken. That has not been true under George W. Bush.
It is a big story, and thus far it is under-reported. It will just kill the MSM to give credit where it's due.