BOB GARFIELD: Two American soldiers were killed in Baghdad on Monday - Glenn Allison of Pittsfield, Massachusetts and Charles E. Bush, Jr. of Buffalo - died, coalition officials said, in a bomb blast near their convoy. Their deaths were duly noted in the New York Times on page A 10, and in the Washington Post on page A 16.

The inevitable moment has arrived. American deaths in Iraq are no longer necessarily front page news. They've been relegated inside, noted almost perfunctorily next to ads for Dell computers and the Government of Kazakhstan. Normalized, in other words; made routine.

Glenn Allison and Charles Bush gave their lives for their country, and their country will scarcely notice -- because we're used to it. This sad passage isn't an indictment of journalism. It reflects only journalism's ability to document truth, even when it isn't trying to. In this case, war's terrible capacity to render us unshocked by the shocking. [MUSIC]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Next up, media dispatches from Haiti and Pakistan, and the Queen's annual holiday headline.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media, from NPR.