The New York Times’ media blog found that public interest in the war in Afghanistan is so low that it did not register as one of the biggest stories of 2012.
The Pew Research Center’s weekly polling on the public’s interest in news stories showed such a low level of interest that the overseas conflicts didn’t make the organization’s list of the year’s top 15 stories.
Nor did the Afghan war come up often when The Associated Press conducted its annual poll of editors and news directors in the United States. The only overseas stories voted to be the year’s top news stories involved Libya and Syria.
Yahoo’s list of the top news stories of the year also omitted the war, and so did a separate list of the top international news stories. Those lists were created by analyzing millions of searches by Yahoo users.
It is hard to say if the amount of interest is low because coverage of the war is scant or if the coverage is scant because interest is low. Either way, the media has focused very little attention on both the president’s use of drone strikes to kill terrorists across the globe as well as the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
Not everyone has forgotten about the troops in Afghanistan, however. Spirit of America’s "68,000 Remember" campaign, which is collecting photos to create a wall of remembrance for those still serving. Photos can be uploaded to the group’s Facebook page; the photos submitted already can be viewed here.