The October 31 broadcasts of ABC's World News with Charles Gibson, NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams, and the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric featured as their lead stories the controversy surrounding the “botched joke” by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who, at a campaign rally in California on October 30, said: “You know, education -- if you make the most of it, you study hard, and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.” Similarly, the November 1 edition of the Los Angeles Times ran the Kerry story on its front page. The network news and the Times, however, devoted significantly less attention to a story that actually affects troops on the ground in Iraq: The U.S. military reportedly acceded to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki's October 31 demand that U.S. checkpoints established around Sadr City, a Baghdad neighborhood, be removed by 5 p.m. that day, Baghdad time -- checkpoints that were part of an effort to locate a U.S. soldier who is thought to have been kidnapped by the Madhi Army, a militia under the control of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and which reportedly bases itself in Sadr City. The Times relegated this story to Page 10.

The network news' and Times' reports focused on how relations between Maliki and the United States have become increasingly strained and presented the dismantling of the checkpoints as yet another example of this. But despite the media's extensive attention to Kerry's alleged “insult” of the troops, which he denied was any such thing, the networks and the Times, in covering the Sadr City story, have given little or no attention to the potential impact of the United States' accession to the Iraqis' actions on the morale of U.S. soldiers -- the U.S. military, reportedly at the order of a foreign power, abandoned a component of its search for a missing soldier. In a November 1 entry to his blog, The Daily Dish, blogger Andrew Sullivan explained the significance of this story, and why it deserves more extensive coverage than Kerry's remarks:

While the media is obsessed parsing the ad libs of someone on no ballot this fall, something truly ominous has just happened in Iraq. The commander-in-chief has abandoned an American soldier to the tender mercies of a Shiite militia. Yes, there are nuances here, and the NYT fleshes out the story today. But the essential fact is clear. In a showdown for control of Baghdad, the Iraqi prime minister took orders from Moqtada al-Sadr, and instructed the U.S. military to withdraw from Sadr City. The American forces were trying both to stabilize the city but also to find a missing American serviceman. He is still missing.

[...]

The U.S. military does not have a tradition of abandoning its own soldiers to foreign militias, or of taking orders from foreign governments. No commander-in-chief who actually walks the walk, rather than swaggering the swagger, would acquiesce to such a thing. The soldier appears to be of Iraqi descent who is married to an Iraqi woman. Who authorized abandoning him to the enemy? Who is really giving the orders to the U.S. military in Iraq? These are real questions about honor and sacrifice and a war that is now careening out of any control. They are not phony questions drummed up by a partisan media machine to appeal to emotions to maintain power.

ABC devoted 4 minutes and 11 seconds to the Kerry story, which led its broadcast, compared with 3 minutes and 49 seconds to the Sadr City checkpoint story. ABC News correspondent Terry McCarthy noted in passing that military “had set up the checkpoints to search for the missing American soldier” but concluded: “On the surface, this is about improving traffic flow in Baghdad. In fact, it is a power struggle between the U.S. Military, Sadr's militia, and the Maliki government. Maliki is choosing to side with Sadr, publicly rebuffing the U.S.” Notably, in introducing the segment on Kerry, World News host Charles Gibson noted that the controversy over Kerry's remarks “is an object lesson in how, in this day and age, an idle political remark gets seized upon, becomes fodder for the talk shows, the blogs, and the politicians, and suddenly obscures discussion of all other issues.”

NBC devoted 3 minutes and 46 seconds to the Kerry story, but only 2 minutes and 12 seconds to Sadr City. As with McCarthy, NBC News Middle East correspondent Richard Engel noted only in passing that “U.S. forces imposed the checkpoints last week to search for a missing U.S. soldier.”

CBS devoted two separate segments to Kerry -- the lead story and a discussion later in the broadcast with former Bush White House communications director Nicolle Wallace and Democratic strategist Mike McCurry -- which lasted for a total of 5 minutes and 40 seconds. By contrast, CBS devoted 1 minute and 53 seconds to the Sadr City checkpoints. CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reported that the Madhi Army has “been pushing hard to get rid of the U.S. security barriers set up around their area to search for an American soldier abducted last Monday,” and that "[t]he American checkpoints disappeared within hours of Maliki's order, and along with them, American hopes of stopping their missing soldier being transported out of Baghdad if he is even still alive."

The Los Angeles Times devoted more than 1,500 words to its front-page article on Kerry's comments, compared with less than 900 words for its Page 10 article on Sadr City. Regarding the missing soldier, the Times noted simply:

Soon after, U.S. forces withdrew from checkpoints that had restricted movement in and around Sadr City since last week, when troops began searching for a missing American soldier and hunting for a death-squad leader.

[...]

American forces have failed to locate the missing soldier and were under increasing pressure to remove the closures on the vast Sadr City neighborhood, which has 2.5 million residents.

[...].

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an Army spokesman, said he did not know if U.S. officials were aware of the move before Maliki announced it. He said the search for the missing soldier would continue.