Among Top News Stories, A War Is Missing

Look closely at the end-of-the-year lists of 2012's top news stories. What's missing? The 11-year-old war in Afghanistan and American-led counterterrorism efforts around the world.

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.

The absence of words like “Afghanistan” from year-end lists reflects both the national news media's scant coverage of the war and the public's disengagement with it.

“We are in a period where the American public is intensely focused on domestic economic concerns,” said Michael Dimock, the associate director for research at the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “On top of this, the public is having a hard time staying focused on foreign engagements that have been ongoing for over a decade.”

The exceptions to what he called this “war fatigue” are mass killings of Americans in the war zone, “which continue to draw public focus for short periods of time,” he said.

No such occurrence registered on the radar this year. Thus, Pew found that spikes in public interest were higher around events like the Summer Olympics and President Obama's embrace of gay marriage than around anything to do with the war. There were no significant spikes in interest around the secret American campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

About 68,000 Ame rican troops remain in Afghanistan now that the troop surge ordered by the Obama administration in 2010 has ended. Combat troops are scheduled to leave the country by the end of 2014. For the time being the American presence is covered by a small band of reporters, predominantly in the country's capital, Kabul.

Erin Burnett of CNN was one of the few American television anchors to take her nightly show to Afghanistan in 2012. She anchored from Kabul on Dec. 13 and told viewers that “America's longest war is still not won.” Her reporting was cut short; the next day, the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., pre-empted all other programming on CNN.

The Associated Press poll of editors had already taken place; it was redone a few days later, and the massacre was ranked the top story of the year.

A Documentary Maker Puts Money on an Oscar Ad

Matthew Hausle Steven C. Barber is the director of “Until They Are Home.”

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Steven C. Barber, filmmaker, was looking at a used Lexus to replace his 2001 Chevy when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released its lists of Oscar-eligible scores and songs this month. The music from his documentary, “Until They Are Home,” made both.

So who needs a Lexus? Mr. Barber, who operates from a rent-controlled apartment here, bought a full-page “for your consideration” ad in Variety instead.

The ad, said Mr. Barber, who spoke by telephone last week, cost him a little less than i ts standard price of $13,500. As with almost everything related to his movies, he haggled - but at least he didn't ask Variety for a contribution.

“I ask everyone for money,” said Mr. Barber, who describes himself as a salesman by nature. In fact, he makes a living by selling advertising when he isn't pursuing his passion for documentary films, and especially those about repatriating the remains of American military personnel who died abroad.

“Until They Are Home” is a sequel to Mr. Barber's 2009 film “Return to Tarawa: The Leon Cooper Story.” Both films examine the battle for Tarawa, an atoll where in 1943 more than 5,000 Americans and Japanese died, most on the island of Betio, which is smaller than Central Park.

The new movie is about a United States military mission - inspired by the first film - to reclaim the bodies left behind. T. Boone Pickens and Ted Leonsis, said Mr. Barber, are among the wealthy supporter s who contributed to the film's roughly $300,000 budget.

The country singer Clint Black contributed a song, “She Won't Let Go.” The composer Jamie Dunlap, known for his work on “South Park,” was paid for a score. And Mr. Barber got them qualified for Oscar consideration by doing what most ambitious documentarians do - spending still more money.

For starters, it cost about $18,000, he said, to have the movie shown for a week in one theater each in New York and in Los Angeles, with accompanying ads in The Village Voice and The Los Angeles Times.

Conversion of the film to a specified digital format, another Oscar requirement, cost an additional $3,000. It took about $400 more to make some 200 DVDs for distribution to documentary branch members, who did not put the film on their short list of 15 contenders.

But Mr. Barber hedged his bets by filling out some extra paperwork for the group's music branch. Hence, Mr. Black's song became one of 75 that are being considered for nominations, while Mr. Dunlap became one of 104 official contenders in the best score category.

If they are nominated, Mr. Barber is confident he can raise more money, to be used for a film about repatriating remains from the Philippines. As for the Variety ad, he figured, it was worth a used Lexus.

“I've got to roll the dice,” he said, “and make it look like I'm bigger than I am.”