Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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
tend to ‘index’ their reporting to the views of the political elite and other
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
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
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.
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
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:
inevitability of war and U.S. preparation for it, critiques that attempted to
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
percentages (45 to 52 percent) said they believed that the United States
had “found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working
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
Obviously the news media did not do their job in educating the public in the run-up to the
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
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
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
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
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
Censorship and propaganda exist in the news media and come in many
Although they will rarely admit to it, news organizations are often willing
major media owners are members of the political elite themselves and
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
see the consequences of the journalistic policies of the press in its mission to the public
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
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
Lance Bennett (2003a) observed that the US press exhibited high levels of
complicity with the government in regard to the 2003 Iraq War, discussing
(2005) offer one of the few comparative studies of the coverage of the
2003 Iraq War. They found significant differences in war framing between
include the responsibility frame, for instance, while the American sites
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
candidate or issue.’ By doing this, the media might also trigger a ‘spiral of
Of course, there are alternative explanations. Some of these come from Kull in his 2003
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
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
do not pay enough attention to the news—does not hold up. As discussed,
misperception, and in the case of those who primarily got their news from
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
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
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
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.