Conservatives would probably say that “no news is good news” when it comes to Iraq — especially since they consider almost any news reported by respectable media outlets to be bad news.

In fact, no news is worse than bad news or good news. We need to be reminded by each day’s paper and every newscast that we are still involved in conflicts in which Americans almost daily give their lives.

Unfortunately, as CJR Daily points out, the media isn’t doing too well at focusing on the important matters facing American citizens:

Looking at the latest edition of the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s weekly roundup of top stories for the previous week, the long-term trend of sagging coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continues apace.

During the week of June 3-8, the wars didn’t even crack the top five of cross-platform coverage. Overall, the 2008 campaign grabbed the top slot, with the immigration debate second, American/Russian relations third, the Scooter Libby verdict fourth, while the Paris Hilton saga came in at number five. The wars didn’t crack the top five most covered stories either on the radio, cable tv or network tv, while it sneaked into the fifth spot online and came in third in newspapers.

One would think Iraq or Afghanistan would at least be more important that Paris Hilton, and broken the fifth spot — at a minimum — across all forms of media.