...Dr. Arnot included excerpts from an e-mail from Jim Keelor, president of Liberty Broadcasting, which owns eight NBC stations throughout the South. Mr. Keelor had written NBC, stating that "the networks are pretty much ignoring" the good-news stories in Iraq. "The definition of news would incorporate some of these stories," he wrote. "Hence the Fox News surge."

Reached for comment, Mr. Keelor said that he was "not lambasting anyone" and that NBC News "indicated they were sensitive to the issues." But he added, "Of course it’s political. Journalism and news is what unusual [events] happened that day. And if the schools are operating, they can say that’s usual. My response to that is, ‘The hell it is.’ My concern there is that almost everything that has occurred in a Iraq since the war started is unexpected."

That pretty much summed up Dr. Arnot’s attitude as well. In his letter to Mr. Shapiro, he wondered why the network wasn’t reporting stories of progress in Iraq, a frequently heard complaint of the Bush administration. "As you know, I have regularly pitched most of these stories contained in the note to Nightly, Today and directly to you," he wrote. "Every single story has been rejected."[...]

While Dr. Arnot’s fitness as a reporter may be under scrutiny, his criticism of NBC News does go to the heart of an ongoing issue in this election season, the media perception of the war in Iraq. On Sunday, Feb. 8, when Tim Russert asked President Bush on NBC’s Meet the Press if the administration had miscalculated "how we would be treated and received in Iraq," Mr. Bush’s responded that he disagreed with the premise of the question: "Well, I think we are welcomed in Iraq. I’m not exactly sure, given the tone of your questions, we’re not."

The exchange showed the distance between the White House and the media on how the war had been presented to Americans. They were two men watching different TV shows—Mr. Bush had his sources, and Mr. Russert saw what he saw.