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Amplifying
Officials, Squelching Dissent
FAIR study finds democracy poorly
served by war coverage
Since
the invasion of Iraq began in March, official voices have dominated U.S. network
newscasts, while opponents of the war have been notably underrepresented,
according to a study by FAIR.
By
Steve Rendall & Tara Broughel
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)
Reposted by Bulatlat.com
Starting
the day after the bombing of Iraq began on March 19, the three-week study
(3/20/03-4/9/03) looked at 1,617 on-camera sources appearing in stories about
Iraq on the evening newscasts of six television networks and news channels. The
news programs studied were ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly
News, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports, Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume, and
PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.*
Sources
were coded by name, occupation, nationality, position on the war and the network
on which they appeared. Sources were categorized as having a position on the war
if they expressed a policy opinion on the news shows studied, were currently
affiliated with governments or institutions that took a position on the war, or
otherwise took a prominent stance. For instance, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a
hired military analyst for CNN, was not categorized as pro-war; we could find no
evidence he endorsed the invasion or was affiliated with a group supporting the
war. However, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, an NBC analyst, was classified as
pro-war as a board member of the Committee for a Free Iraq, a pro-war group.
Nearly
two thirds of all sources, 64 percent, were pro-war, while 71 percent of U.S.
guests favored the war. Anti-war voices were 10 percent of all sources, but just
6 percent of non-Iraqi sources and 3 percent of U.S. sources. Thus viewers were
more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war;
with U.S. guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1.
The
official story
Official
voices, including current and former government employees, whether civilian or
military, dominated network newscasts, accounting for 63 percent of overall
sources. Current and former U.S. officials alone provided more than half (52
percent) of all sources; adding officials from Britain, chief ally in the
invasion of Iraq, brought the total to 57 percent.
Looking
at U.S. sources, which made up 76 percent of total sources, more than two out of
three (68 percent) were either current or former officials. The percentage of
U.S. sources who were officials varied from network to network, ranging from 75
percent at CBS to 60 percent at NBC.
In
the category of U.S. officials, military voices overwhelmed civilians by a
two-to-one margin, providing 68 percent of U.S. official sources and nearly half
(47 percent) of all U.S. sources. This predominance reflected the networks focus
on information from journalists embedded with troops, or provided at military
briefings, and the analysis of such by paid former military officials.
Former
military personnel, who often appeared in longer-format, in-studio interviews,
rather than in soundbites, characteristically offered technical commentary
supportive of U.S. military efforts. In a typical comment, retired general (and
CNN consultant) Wesley Clark told Wolf Blitzer on April 6: “Well, the United
States has very, very important technological advantages. Unlike previous
efforts in urban combat, we control the skies.” Analysis by these paid
military commentators often blended into cheerleading, as with Clark’s comment
from the same interview: “First of all, I think the troops and all the people
over there, the commanders, have done an absolutely superb job, a sensational
job. And I think the results speak for themselves.”
Though
some of these analysts criticized military planning, and were attacked for doing
so by the administration and its allies (New York Times, 3/31/03), the rare
criticisms were clearly motivated by a desire to see U.S. military efforts
succeed. For instance, while NBC’s hired analyst, retired Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, said he expected the U.S. to prevail in the war, he worried that
there weren’t sufficient ground troops in place for an expected battle for the
city of Baghdad (3/25/03): “We have no business taking on that mission unless
we're prepared to decisively employ combat power.”
Of
a total of 840 U.S. sources who are current or former government or military
officials, only four were identified as holding anti-war opinions--Sen. Robert
Byrd (D.-W.V.), Rep. Pete Stark (D.-Calif.) and two appearances by Rep. Dennis
Kucinich (D.-Ohio). Byrd was featured on PBS, with Stark and Kucinich appearing
on Fox News.
Overseas
viewpoints
Among
British news sources, 95 percent were government or military officials; the
remaining 5 percent, four individuals, were all journalists. More than a third
of the British public was opposed to the war at the time of this study,
according to a Guardian/ICM poll (4/1/03), but no British anti-war voices were
carried by these six news shows.
Iraq
provided the only exception to the rule that official sources dominate the news.
Iraqis made 200 appearances on the news shows during the study period, but less
than a third of these (32 percent) were official sources. Interviews with
persons on the street made up the largest category of Iraqi sources, with 62
percent of overall Iraqi appearances. Of Iraqi persons on the street, 49 percent
expressed support for the U.S. war effort, while 18 percent voiced opposition,
but the format of on-the-street interviews seldom elicited deep insights from
either side; typical comments included “God damn to bloody hell Saddam”
(CBS, 4/9/03) and “They can go. USA go” (Fox, 3/27/03).
Given
that the war was ultimately justified as being fought for the liberation of the
people of Iraq, sources who represented Iraqi civil society were in remarkably
short supply on the news. Two of such Iraqi sources were clergymembers, one was
a journalist and one represented a non-governmental organization. Nine sources
came from Iraqi militia groups, both pro- and anti-U.S.
Only
6 percent of sources came from countries other than the U.S., Britain or Iraq.
Given the strong opposition to the war measured in most countries that were not
directly involved in the invasion, it's perhaps unsurprising that these sources
had the most anti- war representation; 48 percent either voiced criticism or
were officials of governments that criticized the war.
Citizens
from those nations that most vocally opposed the U.S. war policy--France,
Germany and Russia--accounted for 16 appearances, constituting just 1 percent of
all guests. Nine of these 16 appearances were by government officials.
Out
of 45 non-Iraqi Arab sources, a strong majority (63 percent) were opposed to the
war. Kuwaitis, whose country served as a staging area for the invasion, were the
only exception to this tendency; none of the eight Kuwaiti sources expressed
opposition to the war.
Restricted
to the street
As
noted in earlier FAIR studies, over-reliance on official sources leaves little
room for independent policy critics or grassroots voices. At a time when dissent
was quite visible in U.S. society, with large anti-war demonstrations across the
country and 27 percent of the public telling pollsters they opposed the war
(Bulletin's Frontrunner, 4/7/03), the networks largely ignored anti-war opinion
in the U.S.
The
FAIR study found just 3 percent of U.S. sources represented or expressed
opposition to the war. With more than one in four U.S. citizens opposing the war
and much higher rates of opposition in most countries where opinion was polled,
none of the networks offered anything resembling proportionate coverage of
anti-war voices. The anti-war percentages ranged from 4 percent at NBC, 3
percent at CNN, ABC, PBS and FOX, and less than 1 percent--one out of 205 U.S.
sources--at CBS.
While
the percentage of Americans opposing the war was about 10 times higher in the
real world as they were on the nightly news (27 percent versus 3 percent), their
proportion of the guestlist may still overstate the degree to which they were
able to present their views on U.S. television. Guests with anti-war viewpoints
were almost universally allowed one- sentence soundbites taken from interviews
conducted on the street. Not a single show in the study conducted a sit-down
interview with a person identified as being against the war.
Anti-war
sources were treated so fleetingly that they often weren’t even quoted by
name. While 80 percent of all sources appearing on the nightly news shows are
identified by name, 42 percent of anti-war voices went unnamed or were labeled
with such vague terms as “protester” or “anti-war activist.” Only one
leader of an anti-war group appeared as a source: Leslie Cagan of United for
Peace and Justice, a New York-based organizer of anti-war marches, appeared on a
March 27 CNN segment in a one-sentence soundbite from an on-the-street
interview.
Beyond
the battlefield
Perhaps
as striking as the dominance of official voices and the scarcity of dissent on
these shows was the absence of experts dealing in non-military issues. The story
of war is much larger than simply what happens on the battlefield; it includes
issues of international law, human rights and global and regional
politics--issues beyond the scope and expertise of former generals.
But
few people with the expertise to address such questions were sought out on the
nightly news. FAIR found that academics, think tank staffers and representatives
of non- governmental organizations (NGOs) accounted for just 4 percent of all
sources.
With
64 appearances overall, this group included just one source who spoke against
the war, Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Center, a civil rights NGO.
Twelve sources supported the war, while the remaining 51 sources did not take an
explicit position.
Nearly
half of the think tank sources (seven of 16) favored the war, while none
opposed. The Council on Foreign Relations was most frequently represented; two
of its three sources supported the war. Academic sources included three
supporters of the war and no opponents.
The
International Committee of the Red Cross, which takes no political positions,
was the leading NGO, with four appearances; no other NGO had more than one
appearance. Of those with discernable positions on the war, two sources were in
favor, one opposed.
More
often, when television wanted a non-official source to provide context, it
turned, somewhat incestuously, to journalists from other news outlets--who
provided 8 percent of all sources. Relatives of military personnel made up
another 4 percent of sources.
SIDEBAR:
The Best--and Worst--of
an Imbalanced Lot
In
terms of their guestlists, the television outlets studied by FAIR were
more alike than different: All had a heavy emphasis on official sources,
particularly current and former U.S. military personnel; each featured a
large proportion of pro-war voices; and none gave much attention to
dissenting voices.
But
these trends were more or less pronounced on different shows. The outlet
with the smallest percentage of U.S. sources who were officials (60
percent) and the largest percentage of U.S. sources who were anti-war (4
percent) was NBC Nightly News, despite the network's ownership by
General Electric, a significant military contractor.
The
highest percentage of officials among U.S. sources (75 percent) and the
lowest number of U.S. anti-war voices (one--a soundbite from Michael
Moore's March 24 Oscar speech) was CBS Evening News. The show's anchor,
Dan Rather, had openly declared the partisanship of his coverage (Larry
King Live, 4/14/03):
Look,
I'm an American. I never tried to kid anybody that I'm some
internationalist or something. And when my country is at war, I want my
country to win, whatever the definition of "win" may be. Now,
I can't and don't argue that that is coverage without a prejudice. About
that I am prejudiced.
PBS's
NewsHour also had a relatively low percentage of anti-war
voices--perhaps because the show less frequently features on-the-street
interviews, to which critics of the war were usually relegated.
Though
Fox News Channel frequently engaged in overt cheerleading for the war
and is on record as considering itself a pro-war news outlet (Baltimore
Sun, 4/2/03), Fox's Special Report with Brit Hume had fewer U.S.
officials than CBS (70 percent) and more U.S. anti-war guests (3
percent) than PBS or CBS. Eighty-one percent of Fox’s sources were
pro-war, however, the highest of any network. CBS was close on the
Murdoch network’s heels with 77 percent. NBC featured the lowest
proportion of pro-war voices with 65 percent. |
*The
study was conducted using Nexis database transcripts. At publicatoin time,
transcripts for six World News Tonight dates and two NewsHour dates were
unavailable. Reposted by
Bulatlat.com
May/June
2003
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