Patrick Cockburn touches on the dereliction of duty and what motivates it on the part of the media.

"This is the weakness of journalism. It reports, and its consumers expect it to report, what is new. The abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, which once seemed so shocking, has become old news and no longer relevant".

"War has always been the meat and drink of international journalism. The same is true of home-grown violence. “If it bleeds it leads,” is the well-tried editors’ rule".

"The reasons why so much of the media have headed for Libya rather than covering uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen or Syria are simple enough. There is a real war there and the US, Britain and France are involved in it. It is also easy to get access to Libya without being stopped at the border at a time when it is becoming difficult or impossible to get new visas to enter the other three Arab countries where there have been serious uprisings".

"This is the Weakness of Journalism"

Libya and the Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

By PATRICK COCKBURN

http://counterpunch.org/patrick04252011.html

(Wikipedia Alexander Cockburn to see what a remarkable family he comes from with his red father Claud Cockburn to his brothers, nieces and a grandfather(?) who was the British colonial ruler of Sri Lanka!)