Media doesn't give enough attention to the real news

Editor,

I'm not sure if Joe Buffaloe was being facetious in his rant about the Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial in Wednesday's Daily Lobo, but he seems to be arguing that no one cares about the trial, and that the issues are confusing and unimportant. This could not be farther from the truth. The media's lame coverage of the trial is the problem. The major news organizations in this country would clearly rather keep the masses occupied with endless coverage of the riveting courtroom battle for Anna Nicole Smith's body than cover any real news.

It's called diversion. I wake up every morning now to live breaking news coverage of this gripping, profoundly important story that affects all of us. This morning, CNN actually showed live pictures from inside the courthouse of people milling around drinking coffee. Absolutely nothing was happening, but we still got to see it live. It was embarrassing and shameful. During the entire 45 minutes I watched this morning, the only actual news it brought up was the Libby trial. But that was only to say that all testimony has ended and the case was going to jury.

Of course, CNN never mentioned the most important aspect of the Libby trial - the testimony implicating President Bush and Vice President Cheney as the source of the Valerie Plame CIA leak. It's high treason to expose CIA assets publicly, but that's not what the American people care about. We all want to know who is going to get possession of Smith's decomposing body.

Why didn't the American people have the opportunity to see any of the Libby trial live? Now that would have been really interesting. CNN covered the Smith trial when there was nothing even happening.

The Libby trial is not complicated or partisan. The U.S. media wants us to think it is, for good reason. Treason is a serious crime, punishable by death. The Bush administration outed a known CIA agent as revenge against her husband, who was highly critical of the administration's attempts to tie Saddam Hussein to weapons of mass destruction prior to the Iraq invasion. Libby testified in court that he got his orders to expose Plame's identity from his superiors - Bush and Cheney. If that's not news, I don't know what is.

Jason Darensburg

UNM student and staff