American Media Coverage of the War Against Iraq

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American Media Coverage of the War Against Iraq

• Americas Response to the September 11th Attack
• Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land
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America Responds Shock and Awe
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America RespondsShock and Awe
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America Responds Shock and Awe
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America Responds Shock and Awe
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America Responds Shock and Awe
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America Responds Shock and AweMission
Accomplished!
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How the American Media Failed

• There were no weapons of mass destruction in
  Iraq. Did not critically analyze Bush
  Administration assertions about Iraqi possession
  of WMD.
• Iraq was NOT involved in the anti-American terror
  plots of Al Quaeda. Did not critically analyze
  Bush Administration assertions about Saddam
  Hussein connections with Al Quaeda and complicity
  in September 11th.
• Arab World does not oppose US because it hates
  freedom. Did not analyze the complex events in
  Middle East

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America Responds Shock AweImages We Didnt See
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America Responds Shock AweImages We Didnt See
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America Responds Shock AweImages We Didnt See
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Fear is the Frame

• fear as frame, negativity, prospect theory

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Setting the News Budget

• Media focus on the big story
• limited international news hole limit of one
  international story per day
• greater cost of international coverage
• media mergers, fewer resources fewer independent
  sources, reliance on wires
• most stories covered from NY or else by parachute
  press

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The Big Story

• Pack tendency
• Focus on rogue states

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Follow the PackDeclaring Victory

• "Iraq Is All but Won Now What?
• (Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)
• "Congress returns to Washington this week to a
  world very different from the one members left
  two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially
  over and domestic issues are regaining
  attention."
• (NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)
• "We had controversial wars that divided the
  country. This war united the country and brought
  the military back."
• (Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)
• "We're all neo-cons now."
• (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
• "The war was the hard part. The hard part was
  putting together a coalition, getting 300,000
  troops over there and all their equipment and
  winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a
  democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as
  winning a war."
• (Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

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Mission Accomplished

• "Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost
  starting to think that we had become inured to
  everything that we'd seen of this war over the
  past three weeks all this sort of saturation.
  And finally, when we saw that it was such a just
  true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I
  think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just
  sort of that pure emotional expression, not
  choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many
  things these days seem to be. Really
  breathtaking."
• (Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly,
  appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03,
  discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein
  statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to
  have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation--Los
  Angeles Times, 7/3/04)

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Follow the Pack

• "The only people who think this wasn't a victory
  are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people
  here in Washington."
• (Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV,
  4/19/03)

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Follow the Pack

• "Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have
  demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the
  battlefield produces swift and relatively
  bloodless victory. The three-week swing through
  Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
• (Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/13/03)

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Follow the Pack

• "Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is
  officially over, what begins is a debate
  throughout the entire U.S. government over
  America's unrivaled power and how best to use
  it."
• (CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)

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• "The war winds down, politics heats up....
  Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom
  Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes
  the moment on an aircraft carrier in the
  Pacific."
• (PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's
  "Mission Accomplished

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White House Sets Agenda

• Bush Administration tight control of information
  flow. Any information is then reported
• Bush Administration forces focus on its preferred
  policy tools confrontation vs. cooperation
  unilateral action force as preventive measure

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White House Sets the Agenda

• Embedding Reporters
• Denying Independent Access
• Encouraging Indirect Censorship of Off-Message
  (aiding and abetting)

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White House Sets the Agenda Simplifying and
Amplifying the Spun Message Manufacturing Moral
Certainty

• Simplification of WMD imprecise
• nuclear program vs. nuclear weapons
• chemical weapons, what is a WMD.
• Horseshoes and hand grenades versus precision
• Complex political, historical issue ambiguous
• simplify to single issue

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Language and Framing of the WMD

• Weapons of mass destruction
• nuclear weapons/ dirty bombs vs. mini-nukes,
  bunker busters, tactical nuclear weapons
• Chemical Ali,

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Framing a WMD-terrorism connection

• terrorism definition
• Rumsfeld labeling of N. Korea as a terrorist
  state

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How US News-Gathering Practices Facilitate
Government Manipulation of the Press

• Inverted Pyramid
• He said She said approach
• Sensationalism and emotive language
• Reduction of policy debates to partisan struggle

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Forms of Coverage

• Breaking News
• Political Diplomatic Stories
• Features Human Interest
• Background Stories
• Commentary Opinion
• Interviews Debates

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How US News-Gathering Practices Facilitate
Government Manipulation of the Press

• Inverted Pyramid
• Stenographic reporting of government statements
• Allows Administration to frame issue (WMD)
• Discounts alternative perspectives

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How US News-Gathering Practices Facilitate
Government Manipulation of the Press

• Interest in Statistics and facts
• Avoidance of Uncertainty, preference for
  statistics, avoidance of uncertainty of
  intelligence reports
• 24 hour news cycle means little time to research,
  investigate and confirm
• Pack journalism (CYA)
• Time and Space constraints (little background)

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Sourcing

• Reliance on Administration Sources
• Adoption of politicized administration language
• Adoption of politicized administration
  pronouncements e.g. link between Saddam Hussein
  and WMD.
• Off the Record
• no accountability
• Think Tanks

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Making the World Safe for America

• Focus on Threat to America
• US Bilateral relations vs. relationships between
  other countries (e.g. Syria and Iran, Syria and
  Iraq)
• Focus on US proposals

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US vs. UK Coverage
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Propaganda and the US Media

• Medias close relationship with White House
• bureaucratic affinity
• international affairs provide fewer alternative
  perspectives. Easier for administration to spin
• simple reiterations of administration statements
• administration successful in prioritizing and
  framing WMD issue

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White House Reporter Jeff Gannon

• "Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very
  bleak picture of the U.S. economy. (Senate
  Minority Leader) Harry Reid was talking about
  soup lines. And (Senator) Hillary Clinton was
  talking about the economy being on the verge of
  collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that
  Social Security is rock solid and there's no
  crisis there. How are you going to work you've
  said you are going to reach out to these people
  how are you going to work with people who seem to
  have divorced themselves from reality?"

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Jeff Gannon

• May 10, 2004 "Q In your denunciations of the Abu
  Ghraib photos, you've used words like
  'sickening,' 'disgusting' and 'reprehensible.'
  Will you have any adjectives left to adequately
  describe the pictures from Saddam's rape rooms
  and torture chambers? And will Americans ever see
  those images? "MR. McCLELLAN I'm glad you
  brought that up, Jeff, because the President
  talks about that often."

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Planting Journalists at the White House