Suppose one wanted to know which world one were in: the one described by Dick Gonzalez or another, in which Iraq was actually going to become a viable country? With each new piece of news we modify our opinion of the probabilities. The longer the run in “bad” news, the less probable it is that things are going to turn out well. But by the same token, the longer the run in “good” news, the less likely it is that the true situation is disastrous.

From the point of view of forming public perception, what the scaled back network coverage of Iraq will do is reduce the sampling rate of the “good” news after an intensive sample rate of the “bad” news. Since there have been only 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage in 2008, and assuming the “good” news trend continues, there will be only about 360 weekday minutes of positive coverage compared to the 1,157 of weekday minutes in 2007. While that doesn’t affect what world we are really in, it may alter what world we were perceives ourselves to be in.

I’m going to predict that a run of good news won’t last indefinitely because emergent events will create complications in the future. Such as for example a future emphasis, not on Iraq but on Lebanon and Iran. It’s like running a business where a new set of problems arise from your very success. Good news always spawns bad news in that way. What would be interesting to measure is whether the number of weekday minutes rises when those future crises develop.