All the coverage is negative. All the outlooks are poor.
By Matthew Hennessey – March 13, 2026 6:44 am ET – Wall Street Journal
The scene at the White House on March 12. Photo: Nathan Howard/Reuters
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The media is clearly rooting for an American military loss in Iran.
Read, watch, listen. Every major outlet, with one obvious exception, is hammering the same message about the war: It’s going poorly, it’s getting worse and it never should have started in the first place.
You don’t have to be a journalism professor to sort it out. In fact, it probably helps if you aren’t. Just step back and let the headlines wash over you. You’ll get the message.
A quick run around the internet in the past 24 hours turns up the following top stories:
- “Tremors From Iran War Rattle an International Order Already Under Strain”
- “Weakened by War, Iran Hits Back by Strangling a Vital Waterway”
- “U.S. Refueling Plane Crashes in Iraq, Military Says”
- “US Mortgage Rates Rise as Iran War Ripples Through Financial Markets”
- “War With Iran Puts Further Strain on America’s Pessimistic Farmers”
And that’s just the New York Times. Slide a little further down the food chain and the agenda is easier to discern:
- “Why China could emerge a winner from Trump’s global energy shock” — WaPo
- “Gas is just the start: What else the Iran war could soon cost you” – CNN
- “US intelligence says Iran government is not at risk of collapse” – Reuters
- “Iran won’t surrender ‘in a million years,’ analyst says” – CBS
Media bias isn’t breaking news. Most readers, most of the time, easily filter this stuff out. Every once in a while, however, the filter gets overwhelmed. The gunk piles up. The pipes clog. That’s the effect the press corps seems to be going for here.
Nobody can ignore an overflowing toilet.
So journalists flood the zone with negative coverage: unflattering stories, tales of waste, hints of stupidity, insinuations of corruption, accusations of ineptitude, warnings of impending doom. We’re running out of missiles. Planes are falling from the sky. We’re targeting children. Steak and lobster tails.
The hits keep coming. If you think you picked up something positive or inspiring about the work our military men and women are doing in the Middle East, check again. You probably misunderstood.
Journalists counter that they aren’t paid to be propagandists. Their job is to tell us what’s going on, even if it’s unflattering to the powers that be. That’s true. But they sacrificed the high ground long ago by treating one political party as above reproach and the other as beneath contempt.
Nobody wants propaganda. We’d settle for a plumber.
Mr. Hennessey is editor of Free Expression.
Matthew Hennessey is editor of Free Expression, a daily newsletter from WSJ Opinion. Previously he was the Journal’s deputy editorial features editor, overseeing the flow of columnist and contributor copy on the daily op-ed pages. Before joining the Journal in 2017, he was an editor at City Journal. A native of Morristown, N.J., he is the author of two books, “Zero Hour for Gen X” and “Visible Hand: A Wealth of Notions on the Miracle of the Market.” He is a graduate of CUNY-Hunter College and Fordham University.
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