I want the news media to be biased, but the question is, which bias?

Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Richard Myers entreated a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors to tell the full stories in Iraq and Afghanistan a week ago.

Myers told the editors he reads far more about the problems of servicemembers’ equipment and the latest insurgent attack than about “the thousands of amazing things our troops are accomplishing.” This concerns him, he said, because American resolve is key to success.

The chairman said that part of the problem lies with the military. He said commanders must be more responsive and give more access to reporters. “We’re working on that,” he told the editors.

But still, “a bomb blast is seen as more newsworthy than the steady progress of rebuilding communities and lives, remodeling schools and running vaccination programs and water purification plants.”

This is such a dead horse that it is painful to flog it any more, but we can’t blame Myers for trying. I would like the managing editor of any major news outlet, print or broadcast or cable, to explain why the only regular reports of Good News from Iraq come from blogger Arthur Chrenkoff, not from a MSM outlet. Really, I would like to hear an answer.

OpinionJournal, the WSJ’s online commentary pages, does carry the GNFI series but Mr. Chrenkoff is not a WSJ staffer. He blogs from Australia and was born and raised in Poland. How interesting that America has shed the vast majority of blood for Iraq and spent the overwhelming majority of treasure, but no American writer (including me, I plead guilty) originated the series.

I have said before and I’ll say again: There are only four basic outcomes of this war:

1. Over time, the United States engenders deep-rooted reformist impulses in Muslim lands, especially Arab countries, leading their societies away from the self- and other-destructive patterns they now exhibit. It is almost certainly too much to ask that the societies become principally democratic as we conceive democracy (at least not for a very long time), but we can (and must) work to help them remit tendencies toward violent Islamism from their cultures so that terrorism does not threaten us or them. This goal is what amounts to total victory for the United States.

2. The Islamofascists achieve their goals of Islamismicization (there’s a word for you!) of the entire Middle East (at the minimum), the ejection of all non-Muslims from Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Persian Gulf, the destruction of Israel, and the deaths of countless numbers of Americans. This outcome is what amounts to total victory for al Qaeda.

3. Absent achieving the goals stated just above, al Qaeda successfully unleashes a mass-destructive, mass-casualty attack against the United States and full-scale war erupts between the US and, at the minimum, Syria and Iran. This would amount to a defeat for all concerned.

4. None of the above happen, so the conflict sputters along for decades more with no real changes: we send our troops into combat intermittently, suffer non-catastrophic attacks intermittently, and neither side possesses all of the will, the means and the opportunity to achieve decisive victory. The war becomes the Forever War.

Perhaps you can think of other, different outcomes, but I think these pretty much cover the possibilities.

So the question for us commentati, whether based on the web or in traditional media, is simply: which of these outcomes is best? Which will be most favorable to human flourishing?

As for me, I choose the first, and have no qualms admitting I am heavily biased in favor thereof. And that bias certainly shapes my blogging!

The basic issue for news media:

For the news media, I ask you: which outcome do you want? It is not possible to pretend neutrality here, for the power of the media to frame the public’s debate is too great to claim you are merely being “fair and balanced.” There literally is no neutral ground here, no “God’s eye view” of events, and hence no possibility of not taking sides. One way or another, what you print or broadcast, what stories you cover and how you cover them, what attention you pay to what issues and how you describe them - all these things mean that you will support one outcome over another. Which will you choose? How will you support it? These are the most important questions of your vocation today. But you are not facing them at all.

These questions seem especially relevant in light of the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize for “breaking news” photography earlier this month to the Associated Press for this series of photos from Iraq. Stop reading now and look at the photos before reading on to see whether you believe with my own conclusions, that Wretchard cut to the quick so well:

One of these stunning photographs shows the Blackwater contractors strung up on the Fallujah bridge; another is a photograph which appears to show US soldiers cowering in fear; and the third is the famous execution on Haifa Street. The rest show US troops humiliating Iraqis to one degree or the other. There are no pictures of the Iraqi elections.

Since news by definition shows the truth one would expect the insurgency so lovingly depicted in these AP photos to have triumphed. But since that never happened and prospects grow dimmer by the day, the Pulitzer should be awarded instead for Poetry, since according to the Greeks history is reserved for things as they are but poetry may deal with things as they should be.

The award of the Pulitzer to this disgusting series of photographs should be welcomed by posterity. Fifty years hence people can look back at the work of people who called themselves journalists and judge.

Michelle Malkin has a compendium of commentary, including Riding Sun’s “content analysis:”

U.S. troops injured, dead, or mourning: 3 (2, 3, 11)

Iraqi civilians harmed by the war: 7 (4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 18)

Insurgents looking determined or deadly: 3 (6, 15, 20)

US troops looking overwhelmed or uncertain: 3 (7, 12, 14)

US troops controlling Iraqi prisoners: 2 (16, 17)

Iraqis celebrating attacks on US forces: 2 (1, 19)

Equally telling is what the photos don’t show:

US forces looking heroic: 0

US forces helping Iraqi civillians: 0

Iraqis expressing support for US forces: 0

Iraqis expressing opposition to insurgents: 0

With the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize for these photos, it’s not hard to conclude that the decision makers of the media establishment are indeed facing which outcome of the war they support, and the answer is Islamism.

The last word for this post goes to Kevin Myers of the UK Telegraph, writing last November:

We in the media must learn what our role in that struggle will be. Vicarious indignation at so-called atrocities is a moral frivolity: it proves that we are unaware of the scale of the crisis we face, now and into the foreseeable future. Our common enemy has vision, dedication, courage and intelligence. He is profoundly grateful for whatever tit-bits come his way: our media have a moral obligation to ensure that we are scattering absolutely none in his direction.

We’ll wait to see whether Gen. Myers’ entreaties have any effect. Personally, I don’t think they will.

(see James Joyner’s Beltway Traffic Jam.)