Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds is rounding up posts arguing that the media are emphasizing the Abu Ghraib story over the Berg beheading because of the hope that the prison story will hurt Bush more. Glenn does this sort of thing a lot, which is painful to see, because he really is a smart guy on a lot of topics. But news judgment isn't one of them. A few quick points:
1. Newspapers (with a few exceptions) didn't show pictures of the beheading out of an old editors' rule: Never make customers throw up their breakfast over the newspaper. It makes the ink run on the classifieds. When everything's available on the internet, maybe the rule has outlived its usefulness, but it's a rule that's been applied pretty uniformly since photography was invented. Pretty hard to blame it on liberal bias.
2. The Berg story, dramatic as it was, was basically a one-day story. When bad guys do bad things, that's news. But that's all it is. The only follow-ups concern vague allegations by the victim's parents and speculation about what the heck Berg was doing over there in the first place. Not very strong stuff. Until, and unless, we catch the guys who did it, there won't be much more to report. The prison story has "legs" (and the photos are more publicly presentable). We will continue to see developments in this story for months to come, and its tentacles are almost certain to spread. Has it been overplayed? I think so. But it's big news and will remain so.
3. The fact that the Berg beheading drove up web traffic does indicate something about public interest in the story. But at least some of the interest is voyeuristic. Newspapers aren't ever going to get that business.
4. One aspect of the prison story actually says something good about newspapers, although they will never get credit for it at Instapundit. In my experience, newspapers pretty consistently play up stories that require some sort of public response. I don't think it really makes much difference which party benefits from the story -- whether its impeachment of a Democrat or prison abuse blamed on a Republican. This habit that newspapers have of writing a lot about stories that require some sort of public decision is precisely the role the Founding Fathers envisioned for the press. And it's a job the press does pretty well.