Bush’s Iraq invasion won the journalism war
Overdue.
Of course, managing war news is an established tradition
In the only sociological study to date of the substantive content of media coverage during the first six weeks of the Iraq war, Andrew Lindner found that journalists embedded with American troops emphasized military successes more often than they covered the invasion’s consequences for Iraqi citizens.
“The embedded program proved to be a Pentagon victory because it kept reporters focused on the horrors facing the troops, not the horrors of the civilian war experience,” said Lindner. “The end result: a communications victory for an administration that hoped to build support for the war by depicting it as a successful mission with limited cost…”
“With the vast majority of embedded coverage citing U.S. military sources, as long as the soldiers stayed positive, the story stayed positive,” Lindner said…
While embedded reporters were most likely to tell the military’s story, and local consequences were well represented by Baghdad-stationed reporters, independent reporters produced the most balanced coverage depicting both sides of the story.
A PDF of the article is available here.
Posted: Thu - May 15, 2008 at 11:41 AM