Mainstream news media suffer collateral damage from Iraq war

Posted on Fri, Aug. 19, 2005

BY RON HUTCHESONKnight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - As the battle for Iraq's future plays out half a world away, the American news media are caught in the crossfire at home.

War supporters accuse journalists of undercutting the troops by highlighting problems and ignoring progress in Iraq. War opponents also are unhappy. They say the media failed to question the need for war and sanitize the conflict by refusing to show gruesome scenes of carnage.

Military mom Cindy Sheehan, who got extensive media coverage for her anti-war protest outside President Bush's Texas ranch this month, voiced the view from the left in a conference call with supporters Aug. 10.

"Thank God for the Internet or we wouldn't know anything and we would already be a fascist state," she said. "The mainstream media is a propaganda tool for the government."

That's not the view from the right.

"If you believe the liberal media's reporting on the American military effort in Iraq, you're almost forced to be ashamed of America," the Media Research Center, a conservative media-watchdog group, said in a recent message to potential donors.

In return for a donation, the organization will send a specially inscribed military-style dog tag to a soldier in Iraq. "Don't believe the liberal media!" the dog tag says. "I'm just one of millions of Americans who realize that powerful elements in the media are undermining the war effort."

Army Capt. Sherman Powell reinforced that view with his comments during an interview Wednesday with "Today" show host Matt Lauer in Baghdad. Lauer wondered how troop morale could be so high, given the problems in Iraq.

"If I got my news from the newspapers also, I'd be pretty depressed as well," Powell replied.

"Those of us who've actually had a chance to get out and go on patrols and meet the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police and go on patrols with them, we are very satisfied with the way things are going here."

Experts on the media and war coverage aren't surprised to find news outlets in the crosshairs. Some of the criticism directed at the media echoes complaints from the Vietnam era, when war supporters accused journalists of undermining support for the war, and, by extension, the troops.

"It's the tension about whether a reporter covering the war is supposed to be a patriot or a cheerleader, or just a reporter," said Daniel Hallin, the author of "The `Uncensored War': The Media and Vietnam," and a communication professor at the University of California, San Diego.


Hallin and other researchers who've studied media coverage of the Vietnam War dispute suggestions that negative news stories turned public opinion against the war. Clarence Wyatt, the author of "Paper Soldiers: The American Press and the Vietnam War" and a professor at Centre College in Danville, Ky., said war support declined almost in direct correlation to the number of casualties and the number of troops deployed.

"News coverage is one element among a whole solar system of elements that shapes how people react to public events," Wyatt said. "It doesn't take a news organization to tell you that your son or daughter or husband or wife has been deployed. It doesn't take a news organization to tell you that the kid who used to deliver your newspaper is now in the local cemetery."

Defining reality in a war zone is always tricky, but Iraq is particularly difficult because of the security problems. Reporters stationed in Baghdad can't venture outside the fortified Green Zone without risking their lives. Yet some parts of the country are peaceful.

"War is a complex thing, and you're going to have different realities from different perspectives," said Steven Livingston, an Army veteran and political communication professor at George Washington University in Washington. "What you see depends on where you stand."

Opinions about media coverage split along party lines. A nationwide poll by the Pew Research Center in October 2003 found that a solid majority of Republicans - 55 percent - felt that the news media were "making the situation in Iraq seem worse" than it really was. Only 28 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of self-described independent voters felt that way.

Back then, the death toll for U.S. troops was about 38 a month. It's now averaging more than 70 a month, and August is on track to be one of the deadliest months yet.

Even the war's most ardent supporters, President Bush included, acknowledge that the effort to transform Iraq into a democracy faces enormous challenges. The military insurgency shows no sign of abating. On the political front, Iraqi leaders missed their Aug. 15 deadline for a new constitution and are struggling to meet their fallback deadline Monday.

Despite the Media Research Center's harsh criticism of the coverage, Richard Noyes, the organization's research director, expressed uncertainty when he was asked whether it accurately reflects the situation in Iraq.

"The daily attention to the negative might obscure the big picture, or it might be the big picture. My gut tells me it is too negative," he said. Noyes said he'd like to see more stories about the successes in Iraq - new schools, signs of normal life and other positive developments - along with the stories about car bombs and death.

He also worries about the impact on public opinion from negative stories.

"What is the enemy's strategy? It's to sap the public will by nibbling away at it," he said.
Media experts note that the journalist's job is to report what's happening and why, not to rally support, and that news judgment requires assessing which facts are most important. If schools are being rebuilt, that's a news story, but if the society they're in is being blown apart by civil war, that's a bigger news story.

"If events go well, that's what you report. If things are going poorly, that's the reality," said GWU professor Livingston, who's lectured at the National War College. "If bombs blow up and bombs kill Marines and kill soldiers, that's an important story, and covering that is not bias."
U.S. journalists will always focus on lost American lives, media experts said, because that's the most direct link between Americans at home and the war overseas.

"That's the nature of journalism. And it's the nature of combat," Wyatt said. "To criticize the media for covering combat in wartime is like criticizing the sun for coming up."

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