Now that things on the war front seem to be winding down, I promise to post much more regularly and much less whiningly....

But, on that subject, it started to look for a while there like the coverage of the "liberation" of Iraq was feeding into a general mood that was all about the "ends" of the action and obscuring the "means".

One particularly apposite letter in our paper today, from Prof David Gold of NYU, takes issue with a previous contributor who had - in common with so much of the media, lauded the conduct of the war and held up the toppling of Saddam as vindication of its morality. Prof Gold questions him thus:

"Does this mean [he] supports the pre-emptive use of US military power to invade, for the purposes of regime change and 'spreading freedom, liberty and democracy', Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Libya, North Korea, Burma, China, Cuba and numerous other countries?"

The problem is, though, that deep down, there'd be a lot of people in the US right now, with little care for the future international order, who'd answer "Hell, yes.." to that assertion; without even the rider of logistical or financial constraint.

On the news front, good and bad reading from this piece in the Guardian the other day. Here's the staggering take-out:

"In the first few day of the conflict Fox News' audience was up by 379% compared with the same week in 2002, while CNN enjoyed a 393% ratings boost and MSNBC rose 651%."

The perhaps unexpected upside, though was that US audiences - or at least an element of them - appeared to be turning beyond the domestic offerings once the diet of unbridled "heroism" got too much.

I mentioned in my last post about the relationship between networks's war coverage and the upcoming senate hearings on media regulation. The Guardian, again, distils - albeit a little too briefly and superficially - some of the key concerns.

Comment?