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Complacency in War: Indexing and the Role of the Media in the

Lead Up to the Invasion of Iraq

Jack Michael Stephens

Journalism 464
Professor Tabb
May 18, 2007
Stephens 2

It has now widely been acknowledged by many academics and journalist that

during the lead up to the Iraq war the media became lax in it’s supposed “watch dog role”

in scrutinizing the government in it’s case for war. Because of this many within the

public perceived the war as a just war and even thought that Saddam Hussein had a direct

connection to 9/11.1 Instead of blaming the public for lack of attention to the media and

instead of espousing the (what must be comforting to journalists) idea that the Iraq War

was a journalistic anomaly that can easily be corrected with tighter ethical standards, I

argue that the passivity of the press towards the Bush administration was actually of its

own making and is embedded within the culture of today’s journalism. One of the main

reasons for this passivity has to do with what is called “indexing;” indexing is how

journalists get (and what they perceive as) sources. Journalists

tend to ‘index’ their reporting to the views of the political elite and other

official sources (Bennett, 2003b, 2004). When there is consensus among

the elite sources, the likelihood that journalists will investigate an issue

and push for answers is rather low, with the result that the media agenda is

set by government officials rather than by journalists or editors.2

Because the agenda is set by the government instead of the journalists the media will tend

to give to the public what the elite want the public to be feed. In issues of domestic

policy, sources in the government (as well as non-government elites) tend to disagree on

many issues, yet when it comes to international policy many within the government and

the elite tend to agree with each other much more. This is turn leads to a lack of diverse

1
Steven Kull, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War.” Political Science Quarterly
118, no. 4 (Dec. 2003): 571-572.
2
Daniela V. Dimitrova and Jesper Strömbäck, “Mission Accomplished?” International
Communication Gazette 67, no. 5 (Oct. 2005): 403.
Stephens 3

opinions in the news (whether it be print, television, or radio). In the case of the lead up

to war many in the media chose to use this standard form of reporting. Coupled with a

lack of drive to actually delve deeper into the issues of the invasion, being spoon-feed

faulty intelligence on Hussein’s government, and presenting a lack of sources to the

public, the news media inadvertently (as well as in some cases intentionally) became a

mouthpiece for the Bush administration in the removal of Hussein from power. In this

paper I will present evidence from previous studies on news organizations here in the

U.S., and abroad, in order to show how indexing indeed was an important factor in the

news media’s “mistakes” in reporting the lead up to war and how it influenced the

public’s opinion to help support the Bush administration’s goals for Hussein’s removal.

First, a quick explanation of indexing. In a study in 1973 Leon Sigal examined

the structures of news organizations that related to how reporters got their information

and their interactions with their sources. “Because reporters cannot witness many events

directly, they ‘must locate themselves to places where information is most likely to flow

to them.’”3 Because of this news organizations embed their reporters in the institutions of

government. So they will have reporters in the Pentagon, the State Department, the

White House, etc. Because of this most of the news organizations concentrate all of their

efforts in the elite political circles of Washington D.C. to get their sources and stories.

“Officials in a liberal democracy typically do not speak with a uniform voice; there are

variations in elite consensus on important policy issues.” With indexing, reporters and

the media tend to cover stories that mirror the debate within elite circles with “whom

3
Steven Livingston and W. Lance Bennet, “Gatkeeping, Indexing, and Live-Event News:
Is Technology Altering the Construction of News?” Political Communication 20, no. 4
(Oct./Dec. 2003): 365.
Stephens 4

journalists regard as decisive in the outcomes of the issues in the news.”4 But the danger

with this is that when there tends to be consensus in elite political circles, as was the case

with the invasion of Iraq, the news media tends to become a mouthpiece of the

Washington elite as well as (possibly) being the mouthpiece for official administration

policy. Because news reporters are steeped in a culture and tradition of indexing they

tend to not stray to far from the elites in Washington and in turn lack the drive to delve

deeper into a story and as well as trying to find alternative sources that espouse a

different line than the elites.

More specifically, we can see indexing in its role in the lead up to the Iraq War to

what David L. Altheide and Jennifer N. Grimes calls “War Programming.” War

programming is:

the organization and structure of the discourse of recent reportage about

wars, and not mere content. It encompasses content as well as thematic

emphases on dominant frames. Because the main frame involved the

inevitability of war and U.S. preparation for it, critiques that attempted to

question the propaganda campaign propelling the country toward war

were ignored.5

Because there was a large consensus that war was inevitable among the elites in

Washington many news organizations failed to report (fully and accurately) the

opposition to the lead up to war because they thought it was too late to turn the tides of

war. This obviously leads to a public which is less informed than they should be and

more complacent to the administrations line of thinking. Yet the Society of Professional
4
Livingston, “Gatekeeping, Indexing, and Live-Event News,” 365-366.
5
David L. Altheide and Jennifer N. Grimes, “War Programing: The Propaganda Project
and the Iraq War.” Sociological Quarterly 46, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 618.
Stephens 5

Journalists code of ethics states that “public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and

the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by

seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of evens and issues.”6 As

we will see further in this paper this idealistic view of the journalist’s role was not

followed by many of the journalists and news organizations whom follow the SPJ code of

ethics and who’s mission is to educate the public in matters of government policy (as well

as other societal issues).

Public opinion is very important for policy makers in their decision to go to war

and in the lead up to war. Because of this many policy makers and elites in the

government need to make their case to the public through the news media since there is

almost no other way for the public to hear their message other wise on a daily bases.

Since the news media has natural organizational filters in how they give the public their

news policy makers have to frame their message in a way in which they know will give

the viewer the most impact of what they want them to hear. An example would be Vice-

President Dick Chenney saying that it’s a “slam dunk” that Hussein has weapons of mass

destruction (WMD) in his possession. The news media, obviously, will repeat that hard-

hitting catch phrase over and over again throughout the day. Instead of focusing on the

entire interview the news media will only focus on that specific comment which will

further enhance the administration’s policy of invasion since an attentive public will hear,

see, and read that phrase over a period of days if not weeks.

We can see with the New York Times and the Washington Post how the

administration’s framing of the war (during the lead up to war), and indexing, affected the
6
Jay Black, Bob Steele, and Ralph Barney, eds. Doing Ethics In Journalism: A
Handbook with Case Studies (Needham Heights, Massachusetss: Allyn & Bacon, 1994),
6.
Stephens 6

front page stories for both newspapers. During a two-month period of high support for

the invasion of Iraq the Times and the Post tended to mirror what was said during White

House press briefings. Instead of framing their own news the two papers were letting the

administration frame the news for them. From April to May 2003 the key phrase words

mentioned in the press briefings were WMD, terrorism, coalition, freedom, and outlaw

regime. Freedom was the most mentioned phrase with coalition, terrorism, and WMD a

close second, third and fourth. Consequently the phrases used in the front page stories

for the newspapers mirrored exactly the phrases used in the briefings; with freedom

coming in first, than coalition, terrorism and finally WMD.7 Even during a period of time

of low public support for the war latter on, the two newspapers still mirrored the

administration’s talking points. Unlike earlier in the war the White House barely

mentioned WMD anymore as a rational for war, consequently the WMD story was barely

covered on the front pages of the Times and Post.

The media also relied heavily on government sources within their stories. Of all

of the sources that the Times used, government sources were in 44 percent their articles.

The Times also used anonymous sources in 78 percent of their articles.8 For Time

magazine Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell “were referenced and cited much more

frequently than even the heads of state of key countries, including those in Europe and

the Middle East.”9 While government sources were used heavily in the Times and Time

magazine anti-war voices (from the U.N., NGOs, and activists) Time only used them 5
7
Thomas B. Christie, “Framing Rationale for the Iraq War: The Interaction of Public
Support with Mass Media and Public Policy Agendas.” Internaitonal Communication
Gazette 68, no. 5/6 (Oct. 2006): 526-527.
8
Daniela V. Dimitrova and Jesper Strömbäck, “Mission Accomplished?” International
Communication Gazette 67, no. 5 (Oct. 2005): 410.
9
Cynthia Boaz. “War and Foreign Policy Framing in International Media.” Peace Review
17, no. 4 (Oct./Dec. 2005): 353.
Stephens 7

percent of the time while using military actors 20 percent of the time.10 The Times only

covered anti-war protests (and articles with a general “negative” tone) 2 percent of the

time.11 Both Time and Newsweek’s coverage in the lead up to the Iraq War was heavily

influenced by the administration with a majority of their stories on Iraq also being framed

within the same context as terrorism and 9/11.

Time’s and Newsweek’s coverage of Iraq policy was framed by the

September 11 context, as well as stories about terrorism in general…the

September 16 cover stories about Iraq were preceded by cover stories

about September 11 and then followed by a Time September 23 cover

about al Qaeda terrorists. Newsweek’s cover in September 23 emphasized

Iraq, with a main title “How We Helped Create Saddam and Can We Fix

Iraq after He’s Gone?” and a large picture of Saddam Hussein’s face

taking up most of the cover. Within the issue, just before the cover story,

was a four-page photo spread focused around September 11

commemorations, including flags, a kneeling police officer at Ground

Zero, flowers, and President Bush’s words from his speech of

commemoration, spread across two pages, “What our enemies have begun,

we will finish.”12

Newsweek also included stories of terrorist threats against the U.S. with stories on

Hussein and Iraq. Time had a cover story on the capture of a terrorist who planed to

wreck havoc on southeast Asia along with a story on patrolling the no-fly zones in Iraq.13
10
Boaz, “War and Foreign Policy Framing,” 353.
11
Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 410.
12
Amy Fried, “Terrorism as a Context of Coverage before the Iraq War.” Harvard
International Journal of Press/Politics 10, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 128.
13
Fried, “Terrorism as a Context of Coverage,” 128.
Stephens 8

Yet how did the administration so successfully guide the media to frame the

upcoming Iraq War in the context of terrorism and why would news organizations, which

are supposed to hold government accountable, constantly give such a prominent voice to

government officials in their stories and so little to non-government anti-war sources. As

we have seen above, the role of indexing plays a major role in this. As I will show below

the media did not take an active role in making sure their sources were vetted properly as

well as critiquing statements that came from the government.

Numerous studies have shown that during times of war the media tends to ally

itself with the government and the political elites much more closely than is normal for

the media to do all ready (within the context of indexing).14 Some of this has to do with

the fact that the media is just as much influenced by patriotic and nationalistic feelings as

any other blue-blooded American is and when it comes to issues that are framed in a

national security issue context the media, as with the public, tend to side with the

government. Another factor has to do with how the government frames its argument and

how it feeds its argument to the media. But, the most important factor has to do with a

combination of those factors as well as the overwhelming factor of indexing within the

journalistic world and on relying to much on official sources in the every day

dissemination of the news. The current administration in power can use as much rhetoric

and propaganda as it wants, but if the media performs its watch dog role than the public is

less likely to tow the line of the White House. Yet as Steven Kull has shown us, the

public seemed to believe in every line that was being feed to them by the administration
14
“Students of propaganda (Lippman 1925; Doob 1966; Speier 1969; Lasswell
1971; Lasswell, Speier, and Lerner 1979) and American journalism have long noted that
the press capitulates to the government during time of war (Gerth 1992; Kellner 1992;
2003; Shapiro 1992; Jackall 1994; Ellenius and Foundation 1998; Jackall 1999; Der
Derian 2002; Herman and Chomsky 2002).” Altheide, “War Programming,” 619.
Stephens 9

despite the fact that allegations of WMDs and links to Al Qaeda were wrong.

Both before and after the war, a substantial portion of Americans have

believed that evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda existed. Before

the war, in the January PIPA/KN poll, 68 percent expressed the belief that

Iraq played an important role in September 11, with 13 percent even

expressing the belief that “conclusive evidence” of Iraq’s involvement had

been found. Asked in June, July, and August-September…large

percentages (45 to 52 percent) said they believed that the United States

had “found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working

closely with the al-Qaeda [sic] terrorist organization.”

a striking misperception occurred after the war, when the United States

failed to énd any WMD or even any solid evidence of aWMD program.

PIPA/KN érst asked in May whether respondents thought that the United

States has or has not “found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq,

and 34 percent said the United States had (another 7 percent did not

know). In June, Harris Interactive subsequently asked, “Do you believe

clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction has been found in Iraq or

not?” and 35 percent said that it had.15

Obviously the news media did not do their job in educating the public in the run-up to the

war and during the immediate aftermath of the war.

The administration and its elite allies would constantly frame (in the lead up to the

15
Steven Kull, et. al. “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War.” Political Science
Quarterly 118, no. 4 (Dec. 2003): 571-572.
Stephens 10

invasion of Iraq) Hussein and Iraq within the frame of the “War on Terror.” The

administration allowed leaks to occur that framed Hussein and Iraq within the context of

terrorism, specifically Al Qaeda but also with the militant Islamic organizations in

Palestine. Instead of critically challenging their own sources on the accuracy of such

claims many news organizations used those sources (anonymously) in their stories which

in turn were used by the administration to help frame the context for the war in Iraq

(terrorism and WMDs).16

Since Iraq was part of what George W. Bush called the ‘axis of evil’, and

the administration successfully argued that Iraq possessed WMDs and that

the war against Iraq was part of the ‘war on terror’, the responsibility for

the war was perceived as a non-issue. That is, the president and the

administration managed to make the war in Iraq appear congruent with the

‘war on terror’. And, as Entman writes, ‘When an event or issue is clearly

congruent in this way, it becomes relatively easy for presidents to frame it

so that most participants think alike’ (Entman, 2004: 148).17

This further helped the administration make its case to the public. Because, as we have

seen above, the sources used by most major newspapers and magazines used

administration and military officials the journalists covering the war had less of a critical

eye than they should have on the president’s framing of the Iraq War within the context of

terrorism.

The administration also used a certain tactic to help their war policies along. The

tactic in question, called by retired Air Force colonel Sam Gardiner, was the “excluded

16
Altheide, “War Programming,” 626-627.
17
Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 411-412.
Stephens 11

middle.” That is, when people are given shoddy and incomplete information they will

draw false connections due to suggestive statements.18

Throughout the summer of 2003, Gardiner documented incidents that he

saw as information-warfare campaigns directed both at targeted foreign

populations and the American public. By the fall, he had collected his

analysis into a lengthy treatise, called "Truth from These Podia," which

concluded that "the war was handled like a political campaign," in which

the emphasis was not on the truth but on the message.19

And yet because of the way the news media sets up how they get their stories and where

they get their sources they were complicit in the administration’s attempt to influence the

media. Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor state:

Censorship and propaganda exist in the news media and come in many

flavors – using unnamed sources in national security stories; using the

same elite-level sources repeatedly; ‘killing’ a story before it comes to

light; and encouraging self-censorship on the part of working reporters.

Although they will rarely admit to it, news organizations are often willing

colluders with governments and militaries in efforts to censor because

major media owners are members of the political elite themselves and

therefore share similar goals and outcomes.20

Looking back at the utter disregard for challenging the administration’s, in what is now

18
Daniel Shulman, “Mind Games.” Columbia Journalism Review 45, no. 1 (May/June
2006), available on EbscoHost Academic Search Premier (accessed May 13, 2007).
19
Shulman, “Mind Games.”
20
Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor. “The Revival of the Propaganda State: US
Propaganda at Home and Abroad since 9/11.” International Communication Gazette 68,
no. 5/6 (Oct. 2006): 396.
Stephens 12

known, false propaganda Michael Massing, in a 2004 New York Review of Books article

wrote, “‘the Iraq saga should cause journalists to examine the breadth of their sources,’

and wondered whether journalists were too dependent on high-level officials instead

of cultivating lower-ranking people within government bureaucracies.”21 It’s also easy to

see the consequences of the journalistic policies of the press in its mission to the public

and how it reflects on their journalistic standards.

In a poll done in the late 1990s comparing Swedish and American journalists 58

percent of Swedish journalists said that objectivity meant “‘going beyond the statements

of the contending sides to the hard facts of a political dispute’” while only 28 percent of

American journalists thought that’s what objectivity meant.22 Clearly, for journalists in

the U.S. objectivity means quoting and giving equal time to certain political elites in and

around Washington D.C. Yet, as we have seen above, when there are no clear

contradictory statements among the political elite than many journalists do not pursue

opposite views outside of the Beltway and instead give the public a one sided view of a

story that can potentially have more than two sides. This also shows that journalists are

more concerned with getting different views of political elites and less concerned in

actually delving into a story and trying to dig up facts that are important to the issue at

hand.

With the Iraq war delving deeper meant holding a healthy skepticism of

administration pronouncements and not relying on indexing as the sole key to

disseminating the news. Journalists should have sought outside sources and should have

seriously engaged ambassadors from other countries around the world and brought their
21
Oliver Boyd-Barrett, “Judith Miller, The New York Times, and the Propaganda Model.”
Journalism Studies 5, no. 4 (Nov. 2004): 440.
22
Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 403.
Stephens 13

voices into the discussion instead of relying more on administration officials such as

Powell and Rumsfeld.

Lance Bennett (2003a) observed that the US press exhibited high levels of

complicity with the government in regard to the 2003 Iraq War, discussing

10 factors that ‘created a perfect propaganda storm’ in US media. Notably,

the US media ignored the world opposition to the war in a generally

ethnocentric and patriotic storytelling (Bennett, 2003a). Dimitrova et al.

(2005) offer one of the few comparative studies of the coverage of the

2003 Iraq War. They found significant differences in war framing between

US and international news websites. Foreign sites were more likely to

include the responsibility frame, for instance, while the American sites

were more likely to focus on military conflict (Dimitrova et al., 2005). In

addition, US news reporters included more media self-references than

foreign journalists.23

The constant framing of terrorism and Iraq by the administration and the uncritical

compliance in passing on this information to the public by the news media caused many

in the public to side with the administration in their argument that Hussein had to be

taken out due to his connections with terrorists. Magazines such as Time and Newsweek

that constantly framed Iraq within the context of terrorism and using flashy graphics with

Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and the Twin Towers in them continued to feed the fear of the

public about issues of terrorism. Seeing pictures of Hussein along with bin Laden and the

events of 9/11 helped further concretize in the minds of many that Hussein was somehow

23
Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 407.
Stephens 14

connected to Al Qaeda.24

Dimitrova and Strömbäck explain:

The media thus seem to ‘blind’ the audience to alternative interpretations

of events and imply national consensus on issues by not offering opposing

views. In theoretical terms, this means that one-sided coverage might

function as ‘consensus heuristic’, which means that information regarding

a certain issue may function as a clue to which viewpoints are valid or

acceptable. As explained by Mutz (1998: 210): ‘When media emphasize

who or which side of an issue or controversy is ahead or behind, they may

inadvertently cue the consensus heuristic, thus altering attitudes toward a

candidate or issue.’ By doing this, the media might also trigger a ‘spiral of

silence’ (Noelle-Neumann, 1984), deliberately or not.25

Of course, there are alternative explanations. Some of these come from Kull in his 2003

paper on the public’s misperception of the administration’s statements on Iraq. One of

these being that the administration continually would mention 9/11, terrorism, Al Qaeda,

and Hussein in the same speeches and talking points across the country and these in turn

would be viewed, heard, and read by the public. In a letter to Congress Bush stated, “the

necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including

those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the

terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Nothing in this sentence mentions

Iraq, yet the letter to Congress was a justification for a war against Iraq. Cheney also

made statements about Al Qaeda officials meeting with Iraqi intelligence officers as well

24
Fried, “Terrorism as a Context of Coverage before the Iraq War.”
25
Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 413.
Stephens 15

as equating Iraq with being a safe haven for terrorists.26 Yet this explanation ignores the

news media’s role as watch dog. If the media had been doing its stated function than it

would have sought out sources, such as low level bureaucrats and sources outside the

Washington elite, in order to contradict and critique the administration’s argument that

Iraq had WMD and had ties to Al Qaeda. In seeking out these sources many in the news

media could have seen through the administration’s propaganda and in turn could have

filtered out the rhetoric of the administration with level-headed analysis of its own.

Instead of allowing the White House to frame the debate the media in turn could have

framed the debate itself by actually “seeking out truth and reporting it.”27

Another explanation from Kull is:

The seemingly obvious explanation—that the problem is that people just

do not pay enough attention to the news—does not hold up. As discussed,

higher levels of attention to news did not reduce the likelihood of

misperception, and in the case of those who primarily got their news from

Fox News, misperceptions increased with greater attention.28

So obviously it’s not the fault of the public that they had misperceived the facts about

Iraq so badly. And, as stated above, if the press had done it’s job it could have actively

shielded the public from false information by giving greater voice to dissenters within the

government as well as giving voice to those outside the Beltway.

It is the culture of the newsroom that drives journalists to only seek sources within

elite government circles, especially if a journalist has been mingling within those circles

for many years (such as Bob Woodward). Journalists need to actively enforce changes
26
Kull, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War,” 591.
27
Jay Black, Doing Ethics In Journalism, 6.
28
Kull, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War,” 594.
Stephens 16

within their newsrooms and seek out alternative viewpoints and not go after the major

“headliners” in order to propel their stories along. Journalists need to change their

mindset on what is a “credible source” and what a “beat” actually is. Only with this can

we divert another information “blackout” (within the mainstream news media) that

occurred during the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

Bibliography

Altheide, David L. “War Programming: The Propaganda Project and the Iraq War.”
Sociological Quarterly 46, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 617-643.

Black, Jay and Bob Steele, and Ralph Barney, eds. Doing Ethics In Journalism: A
Handbook with Case Studies. Needham Heights, Massachusetss: Allyn & Bacon, 1994.

Boaz, Cynthia. “War and Foreign Policy Framing in International Media.” Peace Review
17, no. 4 (Oct./Dec. 2005): 349-356.

Boyd-Barrett, Oliver. “Judith Miller, The New York Times, and the Propaganda Model.”
Journalism Studies 5, no. 4 (Nov. 2004): 435-449.

Christie, Thomas B. “Framing Rationale for the Iraq War: The Interaction of Public
Support with Mass Media and Public Policy Agendas.” International Communication
Stephens 17

Gazette 68, no. 5/6 (Oct. 2006): 519-532.

Dimitrova, Daniela V. and Jesper Strömbäck. “Mission Accomplished?” International


Communication Gazette 67, no. 5 (Oct. 2005): 399-417.

Fried, Amy. “Terrorism as a Context of Coverage before the Iraq War.” Harvard
International Journal of Press/Politics 10, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 125-132.

Kull, Steven, et. al. “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War.” Political Science
Quarterly 118, no. 4 (Dec. 2003): 569-598.

Livingston, Steven and W. Lance Bennet. “Gatekeeping, Indexing, and Live-Event News:
Is Technology Altering the Construction of News?” Political Communication 20, no. 4
(Oct./Dec. 2003): 363-380.

Schulman, Daniel. “Mind Games.” Columbia Journalism Review 45, no. 1 (May/June
2006): 38-49.

Snow, Nancy and Philip M. Taylor. “The Revival of the Propaganda State: US
Propaganda at Home and Abroad since 9/11.” International Communication Gazette 68,
no. 5/6 (Oct. 2006): 389-407.

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