MoveOn is stupid.

"Yesterday we reached the sad milestone of 2,000 killed in Iraq. But for the most part, the national media are ignoring this tragic milestone. The men and women who died deserve better."

So declared an email Wednesday morning from our friends at MoveOn.

How dare the national media ignore this important milestone! It must be a conspiracy! We better donate more money to MoveOn so they can put ads on the air to tell the public the truth of how many Americans have died, because the national media sure isn't doing it!

Wait, really?

Actually, no. Of what Slate calls the 'five national papers' (NYT, WP, LAT, WSJ, USAT), all ran the 2,000 deaths story on the front page. The LAT led with it. The NYT ran it as a four-column, above-the-fold boxed story. USAT ran it above the fold. I didn't get to see the layouts of the Post or WSJ front pages myself. Hmm, not much 'ignoring this tragic milestone' to be found in the national papers.

How about the big papers in NYC? The Daily News, the Post, amNewYork, and Metro all did their front pages on it (Metro actually emphasized Iraqi civilian deaths more than American soldier deaths).

Surely the national tv networks ignored it, though! Let's check the national evening news broadcasts on the big three networks:

ABC: 2000 deaths is lead story in intro and on program. In addition to overview segment, they run a second report on an individual soldier/family.
CBS: 2000 deaths is second story in intro; a short report on the story is followed by a profile of an individual soldier/family.
NBC: 2000 deaths is second story in intro, followed by a decently long segment on it.

So, to recap, MoveOn is stupid. I don't know whether they wrote their email in advance or wrote it that morning, but either way, they are just liars.