The media is up in arms about "planted" positive news stories in Iraq.

I am assaulted by "planted" positive news stories every day in my own country. We are constantly bombarded by human interest stories that have nothing to do with news. Story after story about some old Black lady running a soup kicthen. Nice stories but not news worthy and hardly important in the grand scheme of things. Soup kitchens will always be filled with drunks and drug addicts and those that refuse to do work they feel is beneath them. I can only think that the news stations think that donations to soup kitchens will go up if they show such stories. So you have a desired outcome planned by the media, no different than "planted" news stories in Iraqi media outlets. My local news station is prone to showing human interest stories during the morning news casts. We have many stories about children suffering terminal illnesses that are surviving chemo etc, or riding their horses across the country to raise money for hurricane victims, although going blind themselves, etc, etc. We have gang bangers getting tattoo removals and job training, usually at the tax payer's expense. On CBS they have a once a week human interest story where you can log into the CBS website and choose one of a few stories that you would like to here more about. This bums me out because other people hardly ever pick the story I would like to hear more about. CBS is actually doing this so that people will log on to their website, pure manipulation, no different from "planted" news stories in Iraq. The media is a master of manipulation. It doesn't bother me, it's just a fact of life.