Television wasn't alone in downplaying the police station bombing story. While the Washington Times and the Washington Post both put the attack on Page 1, scores of major-market dailies, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Arizona Republic, Denver Post, Hartford Courant, Indianapolis Star, New York Times and San Jose Mercury News, kept the story off the front page.

A recent check of the Note on Aug. 2 indicated more of the same: 83 story links in 15 categories, none of them dealing with Iraq. Yet voters are told by the press that come November, the issue of Iraq may very well decide the election.

After June 28, the line about there being "no bad news" from Iraq even seeped into reported pieces. On July 21, the New York Times, in a campaign trail dispatch, noted that one key factor that may work in Bush's favor in November is that "in Iraq, the transfer of sovereignty has led to some reduction in American casualties." But, in fact, nearly as many U.S. soldiers lost their lives in Iraq during the first half of July alone as did during the entire month of June. Of the 15 months since major combat ended, July ranks as the fourth deadliest for U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq. And if August's current fatality rate continues, it will easily claim more American lives than July did.

So why does the press act as if the hand-over of sovereignty has changed the situation on the ground? "It seems the mainstream press has bought in to the White House line about June 28 -- 'OK, we're in a new phase,'" says Lessin of Military Families Speak Out. "But we still have 138,000 troops there and are occupying a country. It hasn't changed. If it has changed, it's increased the violence in many areas. Then again, the press has [always] been in the lap of the administration, and once again it's playing its role of lapdog."

CBS News executive McGinnis denies that charge. "We have 22 minutes [on the "CBS Evening News"] and we pick and choose the stories each night. We make subjective editorial choices every single day, and we're not making them on how to help or hurt George Bush or John Kerry. The decisions [about Iraq] are based on what's happening in Iraq that day."

Of course, major news organizations are still covering Iraq and spending extraordinary resources -- both human and financial -- to keep Americans informed. The major dailies, as well as the nightly network news broadcasts, still dutifully report the developments in Iraq. On Aug. 6, for instance, USA Today ran a long Page 1 account about new fighting in Iraq, while "NBC Nightly News" opened its broadcast with a similar report.

But since the hand-over in Iraq, a certain intensity, or urgency, has been missing from the coverage -- a reluctance to go beyond the day's random bombings, kidnappings and shootings.

To be sure, the 24-hour cable shows are the news outlets that have ratcheted down their Iraq reporting the most over the past six weeks. That became glaringly obvious during the Democratic National Convention in Boston, where many pundits and producers spent much of the time ignoring the politics and bemoaning how little actual news there was to report. Yet here's a small sampling of what happened in Iraq that same week, little of which was deemed newsworthy enough to seriously interrupt the endless, repetitive cable TV discussion about swing voters and Teresa Heinz Kerry's "shove it" remark:

  • July 26: Attackers shot and killed Iraq's senior Interior Ministry official and two of his bodyguards in a drive-by shooting.

  • July 26: A suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives, mortars and rockets near the gates of a U.S. base in Mosul, killing three.

  • July 27: The dead body of a kidnapped Turkish truck driver was found.

  • July 27: One Iraqi was killed and 14 coalition soldiers were injured when a mortar hit a Baghdad residential district.

  • July 28: A car bomb exploded on a busy boulevard in Baquba, killing 68 people and wounding nearly 100. The attack stood as the deadliest insurgent strike since the U.S. occupation began last year.

  • July 28: Seven Iraqi soldiers and 35 insurgents were killed during a firefight in Suwariyah.

  • July 29: Reeling from the violence and a wave of kidnappings, Iraqi officials once again postponed a three-day national conference to choose an interim assembly in preparation for the country's first elections.

    Experts say that week was typical of the chaos that has transpired in Iraq this summer, with or without the spotlight of the U.S. press shining on the region. "Iraq remains very much in the balance. That's the only fair assessment you can make right now," says Brookings' Singer.

    "I've talked to friends who served in the CPA, and I don't know anybody with on-the-ground experience in Iraq who doesn't think the situation there isn't completely screwed up," adds Cook.

    "Iraqis are so embittered and [have] completely lost any faith in us, even the most pro-American Iraqis," says the Philadelphia Inquirer's Dilanian, who says he has had a profound change of heart on the topic. Last April, fresh from reporting in Iraq, an optimistic Dilanian wrote that the press was ignoring improvements in Iraq and underplaying the chance for a real turnaround. In late June he returned to Baghdad to cover the sovereignty hand-over. Summing up his new grim impressions in an Aug. 1 article, Dilanian admitted his earlier prediction was wrong and wrote, "The situation in Iraq right now is not as bad as the news media are portraying it to be. It's worse. Most Iraqis aren't seeing the improvements they had hoped for, and they're not blaming the guerrillas -- they're blaming the Americans. Sovereignty seems to have had zero effect on this equation."

    That's the key story many American news outlets have missed since June 28.

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