There is a series of stories running on National Public Radio this week on “Section 60 Mothers.” They are women who meet at section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery at the graves of their sons killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their common loss creates friendships unlike any they’ve ever had.

The stories remind us that NPR provides the best broadcast news. It gives us context. It talks to people. It lets us know the human cost of things, like tornadoes, floods, fires and war. Those women at Arlington are given the time to explain their graveside rituals, the connections they maintain with sons lost to the war.

But there is so little of it beyond public radio. There is so little effort to make us realize we’re all a part of this. We’re let off the hook. It’s easy to leave the grief to those who can’t avoid it.

And this week, we learn there is even less effort than before to keep the wars, especially the war in Iraq, in front of the people who pay the bills.

A New York Times story, which ran in The Journal Monday, points out that the three major networks have substantially reduced their coverage in Iraq.

Think about how seldom war intrudes into that string of commercials for erectile dysfunction and enlarged prostate treatments that make up so much of a nightly 30-minute newscast. Think about how often Brian or Charlie or Katie signs off at 7 p.m. after giving more time to panda cubs than to Americans fighting wars.

War just doesn’t draw. We’ve got two going on right now and both might last longer than the Vietnam War and mess us up in ways we never imagined. And yet we know so little of the daily grind. People who decide such things have apparently decided there’s just no return in letting us know the grim details.

So just how did this happen? Did public indifference convince news editors that the war was going to drive the audience away? Or did the increasingly low level of war coverage help create the public indifference?

There will probably be studies in journalism schools someday on why, at a time of instant communication and dizzying technology, the American press failed to truly cover a war that would have a profound impact on the country’s future. Did a growing public appetite for empty distraction really push war to the back pages and off the network news? Did no one make the call that sometimes the public needs to know things it might not like?

Consider the obvious comparison. During Vietnam, there were reporters who lived the war for years. They knew their way around. And they showed us the war. They showed a Marine setting fire to a thatched roof with his Zippo. They showed us, and let us listen to, the immediacy of a fire fight and the agony of friends lost and the stunning brutality of a napalm strike.

Coverage of the Iraq war began with reporters embedded with selected units. It was an ingenious way to control their movements. It made for spectacular early pictures of the full tilt run across the desert, but it sharply reduced the freedom of movement, the chance for reporters to follow their instincts to the real stories.

The war in Iraq is probably more dangerous to cover than the Vietnam War. More reporters and photographers have died there already than died in Vietnam. And the military does not seem to accommodate reporters in Iraq as it did in Vietnam.

But we have to cover our wars, don’t we? If we don’t, we can’t learn from them. And if we don’t learn from them, we might do the same crazy stuff all over again.

bkerr@projo.com