John over at Power Line is frustrated by the fact that the Georgian man who lobbed the dud grenade during Presiden’t Bush’s speech there has gotten little to no media attention here in the United States. He also posts a follow-up “correction” noting an email from the editor of the New York Sun with a correction in the spelling of the Georgian man’s name, Vladimir Arutyunian. John then writes:
“[A] Google search on the above spelling shows that the AP’s story has run in a number of papers. The basic point, though, is still right: this story has gotten amazingly little interest or coverage, with the exception of a few outlets like the Sun.”
Only, John isn’t being honest.
If you perform a Google News search of “Vladimir Arutyunian + AP” you get 102reports. If you leave off the “+ AP” you get 628 reports. I admit that the interest might be low like John says, but that’s probably from the fact that Bush wasn’t killed–hell, he wasn’t even injured.
But a combined 730 Google News hits seems like a decent amount of coverage to me. Not to mention that the search with the AP added onto yielded results from 17 states, and major cities like Fresno, Sacramento, Chicago, New York City, and Boston. Hell, even their favorite network Fox News ran the story on their webiste–which means its almost a given that it appeared on their actual television broadcast. I’m sure it also reached an even bigger audience in the local media and print papers, which is still where a majority of Americans get their news.
Lament all you want, the story was covered, John. Sometimes you even have to deal with “your media” slipping up sometimes.
