Media coverage and political dimensions of the Iraq War

Media and Politics - the War in Iraq

While political relations between government and media have always been rife with corruption, disagreement, and discontent, never are these ties more tenuous nor crucial during times of war. War, like the one in which the United States and its allies are currently engaged in Iraq, brings to a critical height the importance of media, its freedom, and its control as relating to its government. "I hate newspapermen," General William Sherman announced nearly a century and a half ago. "They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."

If Sherman were to attempt that politically heroic feat today, he would not have to wait for breakfast to hear from Hell; it would already be online. In the modern world, the digital connectivity of technological advancement allows for the immediate dissemination of facts, but whether or not that factual wave spreads to the public is in the hands of two groups: the media, and the government that controls it, or rather, the government, and the media that controls it. The current U.S.-led Iraq war highlights this issue; the dynamics between the government and the media, both at home and abroad, are further catapulted into an abyss of the complex by election season politics, the nationalistic idea of "spreading democracy," and current religious tensions worldwide.

At its most basic, the issue of government policy and media in the war can be viewed on a nominal level alone: what war is this? In the United States, it is referred to as the War in Iraq (all networks; in print - Times, Post, Globe, Journal, on air - NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, ABC, NPR). In Iraq, it is called the War on Iraq (Al Jazeera, Iraqi Press Monitor, the Sikh Times). International sources, dancing around the name in the limbo of inconclusiveness and political debate that characterize the issue, name the war a variety of things, most commonly as the Struggle for Iraq (BBC, PRI) or another popular choice, the Conflict in Iraq. The controversy in even naming the war in an age of such international news service reflects the key issues at the heart of the political struggle.

The United States launched war on Iraq in 2002, in what was deemed a preventative act against a country with credible evidence of weapons mass destruction, and more fearfully, a leader seemingly unafraid of using them. But it was the politics of fear that emanated from the White House press office and those at other federal departments like the Department of Defense and the Pentagon that galvanized the U.S. media force into action for war.

How quickly we forget: A democratic Iraq was never the reason [Bush] forced us into this war. Iraq's fledgling democracy is a pleasant side effect, a PR move, a heartstring-tugging and patriotic patina of bogus humanitarianism BushCo is now trying to slather over one of the most disastrous and inept military efforts in recent history. It makes for terrific photo ops. It makes for miserable and debilitating foreign policy." (San Francisco Chronicle, 2005.)

Chronicling the events that incited the current war could be attributed to either these weapons of mass destruction as of yet unfound, a key flaw in evidentiary support on behalf of the Federal government, a familial vendetta against the Hussein family a la House of Bush, House of Saud, the energy and gas crises currently heading the worldwide economy, or the rising Christian: Arab tensions engulfing the powerfully well-resourced Middle East - but the reason for war is different depending on not only which side of the struggle you ask, but all of those reporting on it. From this the political surveyor and astute citizen can glean one key truth in the purpose of this war: America has launched a war on a leader, a country, an idea, and an area based on a wide variety of reasons, sometimes all conflicting, but none without key, moneyed, and powerful supporters.

The Iraq war is filled with a wide variety of actors on all sides; the scope of this paper will deal with those in elected and appointed offices in the American government, the U.S. based affiliates of international businesses, the United Nations, and Iraq. The war, catapulted onto the mainframe after the 9/11 attacks and under the auspice of the Bush White House, was captained at the helm by a variety of Bush officials, including the classic powers of the Cheney, Bush senior, and old advisory group, erudite, deeply inbred in Washington politics and blue-blooded to the bone, as well as the publicly popular newer breed of officials, whose names and skin tones appealed to the larger community, like Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice.

Yet, the business community in America, arguably a force as powerful and present in Washington as elected officials themselves, seemingly stood in favor of the war as well. Their complicity is revealed, however, not in business reports or press releases, but instead in the commercials airing on the networks they support and by continued funding of the lobby and election groups partially responsible for the reelection of Bush. Additionally, the remnants of the last Persian war and struggle for oil control in the Middle East makes the allegiances of energy conglomerates with money on American soil implicit; B.P, Sonoco, Shell, et al. remain staunchly in the Republican camp in the crusade to bring down the Hussein government.

The United Nations, which is indirectly supporting the war by not bringing Bush to trial in the Hague for war crimes - a judicial move with actual viability after the Abu Grab scandal and Guantanamo captives - remains on the "unbiased" side of the war. It does not support the Bush government in its efforts to control the area (or resupplement it with leaders who do not contradict American diplomatic and fiscal philosophy), nor does it support the ousted leaders who were invaded, hunted, arrested, and imprisoned. It does, however, aim to secure not only human rights for the citizens of Iraq, but also to protect the freedom of the press covering the war - on all sides.

In Iraq, the approach to the war is entirely different. Iraq is home to the ousted tyrant and human rights abuser Saddam Hussein, whose capture by American troops during the course of the war has now been drowned out by the noise of victory and democratic elections - quite possibly the greatest media spin in history. But to examine how that spin occurred, it is critical to understand where it originated: in the White House Press room.

The United States government has long faced wars in which the media played a decisive role, as Sherman experienced in brief and would come to define the war in Vietnam a hundred years later. A key to the success - as defined by the lack of international censure of the campaign and reelection of the Bush regime - is history of war coverage by American media. It is popularly held that the war in Vietnam was not lost on the front line, but instead here at home. In the Australian Parliamentary briefing on Reporting Conflict in Iraq, it details not only the loss of American popular support by way of the media coverage at home, but also the lessons learned from the strong hand of the British military during their struggle with Argentina in 1982.

In 1982, the United Kingdom went to war with Argentina over the tiny, largely inaccessible group of Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. Because of their locale and the difficulty in getting there, the war was almost impossible to cover from the perspective of the eager British media; accordingly, the government was able to exert complete control over their coverage without necessarily impeding their rights to free press. Because they could only access the islands on the boats of the military, and at that point only continue to cover the story by remaining "embedded" in their ranks, fed by their provisions, and protected by their fighters, the Navy held total control over its press.

The control created by the distance of the war, the desired proximity of the journalists to the action, and their reliance upon the Navy for transmission of their reports created a three-tiered legacy that has defined the Bush Administration's control of coverage of the current Iraq war. First, it created an "esprit de corps" between the military and journalists, who found that they were unable to detangle their own stories (and version of facts) from their slanted exposure to war by the Navy. "It was not just a question of sharing the moods of the troops through shared experience, but of actively beginning to identify them with being part of the whole exercise," noted historians Morrison and Tumber. Secondly, the duality of the relationship allowed for military control of the press. Thirdly, the growing up-to-the-minute exposure of the journalists to the physicality of the war detracted from the big picture and instead exaggerated the importance of singular happenings and specific events.

It is in the loss of the big picture that the Bush regime is most able to capitalize on its military's control of the press. While in the 1990s, the President's father struggled with "pooled" journalists and the lack of coherent and stable eye witness accounts, the current President instead embedded an army of over 700 journalists inside the United State's military campaign as they waged war on the unsuspecting Iraqis.

There is a pretty fine line between being embedded and being entombed," observed Dan Rather in response to the Gulf War of the 1990s.

With the American journalists and those internationally desiring the protection of the winning force fully embedded with the American soldiers at war, the military operation lost its relevance as a list of casualties on both sides, themes of struggle, and reasons for action; at the expense of the big picture, the American media, through little fault of its own, transposed the war into a story of American heroes and lost, young, patriotic souls at the hands of masked enemies, trigger-happy and armed.

CNN.com, easily the most un-slanted of the American-based media outlets covering the war, has a "Special Report" section on its website dedicated to the War in Iraq. Here, it separates its coverage into several different categories: War Tracker, Forces, U.S. And Coalition, Iraq, Weapons, Maps, on the Scene, Sights and Sounds, Impact, Heroes of War, Struggle for Iraq. In the Heroes of War section, the children who have died as innocents in their own country, the women who have huddled in their homes and found food while markets were being blasted by international sources from above and insurgents on the ground, and the men who stood in line to vote against the forceful urgings of their own neighbors are not the people depicted.

Instead, an ever-growing list of American forces shows pictures of smiling twenty-four-year-olds, killed by roadside bombs, and twenty-seven-year-old fathers of two, killed in street combat, limn what this supposedly unbiased source calls "heroes." This is not what the UN tries to protect - a spread of fact - but is, instead, the dissemination of opinion; the opinion of someone who, despite employment as a journalist, has spent the last few months trekking through unknown land at all risk and danger without any arms, totally at the protection, will, and mercy of a soldier, who just graphically lost his life in front of a camera.

The Bush administration capitalized on this crucial truth: press reports are stories, and if the facts that go into those stories can be slanted in one particular way, the story will lean that way too. Graber, in analysis of the current state of embedded journalists and the war in Iraq, convicts the media of narrowcasting, which the Bush administration furthered with tight regulation. By supporting embedded journalism, in fact demanding it, and making sure the Patriot Act created strong loopholes requiring that, for the sake of "responsible journalism," reporters are in fact locked into military combat, the Bush administration wrote its own success story before the first bombs even began liberating Iraq, or "setting Baghdad ablaze," as reported by Al-Jazeera the morning after the invasion.

If the reporters that are embedded with the military, then, are nearly-guaranteed for a particular sentimental slant, and if all else are then limited by force to the daily regurgitation of sequential events at the loss of the full story, then what is the value of so-called facts transmitted from the ground with the troops? Journalist Robert Fisk asserts that the United States government is urging embedding reporters under the guise of journalistic integrity to not only show the gruesome killing of American boys, but to further remind Americans that this war has been launched against a fearsome dictator who could, as Hussein ordered on the American fighting on his turf, tear limb-from-limb the bodies of Americans here at home; essentially, Fisk accuses Bush of selling the journalists out to the policies of fear. He affirms his position by arguing that embedded journalists can be "rushed to the scene to prove that the killings were the dastardly work of the Beast of Baghdad rather than the 'collateral damage'... Of fine young men who are trying to destroy the true pillar of the 'axis of evil." Hampton Sides, for the New Yorker, supports this claim, arguing that Bush planned his use of embedded journalists for just this reason; "the world's not going to believe the U.S. Army, but they'll believe you [the media]."

If the media is, then, at the side of the U.S. Army, and experiencing the war in the same way, the story that is reported is that not of both sides of the war - as the tenants of not only basic journalistic integrity set out, but also as outlined by the United Nations for coverage of the Iraq war - but that of the United States Army anyway. By embedding journalists, Bush did not even need to spin the war; he just needed to play on what his own reporters - those for the American news networks embedded with his military - were reporting. When is the line crossed from fact to propaganda, and how, when the American soldiers are in Iraq supposedly to provide it with a new epoch of democracy and self-reign, is the freedom press that is at the fundamental heart of a successful democracy, being infringed upon by its own liberators?

In the last two years, the embedded journalists have provided the American media with an iconoclastic image to feed the public: young soldiers, eyes sparkling, defending polling booths as elections take place; children, who, according to the photos disseminated in the western periodicals, must have never skipped before in their lives, leap with joy through their city streets, playing games for, again, what must be the first time ever. CNN.com, in its special report section on the war, perpetuates the nationalistic image of the American liberator. One of the many new facets of coverage of this war is the importance of the on-demand visual image and according commentary, both in the blogs with which Graber deals and the very websites the news networks not only use to reach the public through daily emails, but even show on their own programs. The "forces" section of the website deals with weapons, commanders, Air Force, Army, Marines, Navy, Special Operations Forces, and the Coalition (with its ever-decreasing numbers now down to a very bite-sized British, Australian, and Polish subsections). Each section of the page is decorated with a corresponding image; powerful guns, sleek and modern, shooting strong clouds of after-smoke; brilliant stars to represent the military leaders; a G.I. Joe-like marine, expertly positioned to shoot his rifle at oncoming danger; a Special Ops officer who looks like G.I. Joe in a cowboy hat; and, most strikingly, for the Coalition section, a little image of the world, outsized by several massive jets flying to the sides of the Americans. From the website's careful imagery, one could think the whole world is on the American side.

But what side is the American side? The Iraqi section of the Forces subdivision on CNN.com shows gawky, large, and out-moded weapons and leaders; the images of their army and security forces play on the popular images of the communist leaders of the Cold War still actively imprinted in the American national consciousness. Is this how Iraqis actually look, or is this just a representation of the facts that fit the story the American media is reporting?

Not all American media outlets are reporting the same military-game style of warfare that CNN.com presents; in fact, FOX News and FOX News Radio each interrupt their stories and websites with ads for a company that sends care packages to those great American heroes overseas, the treatsfortroops.com company. The commercials and ads remind Americans of how lucky they are to not be living in that old age of rations, and to instead gift a soldier abroad with some of the luxury of home. The company website features its clips that aired on Fox News Channel, and the same happy birthday!, lemonade, gorp, nuts, and Foster-a-Soldier products that were advertised before the 04/28 installments of Hannity & Colmes and the Alan Colmes' radio show.

While FOX News, which proffers "Fair&Balanced" as its trademark, but is popularly known for its fairly right-wing balance, the NBC networks and National Public Radio hold firm to the left-wing of American media reporting. They do not advertise treats for soldiers; their reports involve numbers and bloodshed. "Iraq funeral attack caps bloody weekend," reports the up-to-the-minute Every Fifteen just before midnight on May First. National Public Radio's All Things Considered reported on April 19 the familiar voice of Melissa Block narrating the release of Pentagon-censored photos of military personnel alongside the caskets of those lost soldiers lost in Iraq.

Independent news sources in the United States are concurrent with their embed-sourced versions of the war, but come to it with different approaches. One notable variant in the sea of commonalities is the more Al-Jazeera aligned Arab-American News, a weekly bilingual paper in circulation throughout American metropolitan areas. In commenting on the current events in Fallujah, the April 27th issue reported the story with caustic irony:

Remember Fallujah? A city of some 300,000, which was alleged to be the stronghold of armed resistance to the occupation? Two U.S. attempts were made to destroy this symbol of defiance last year... The Americans called off the attack, but not before hundreds of families had fled and more than 600 people had been killed."

At the same time, other Independent news sources in America without the Arab religious slant are not oblivious to the role of the embedded journalist, the sentimental slant, the business of news, the industry of the media, the spin of the White House, and the irony of the coverage.

Iyengar promotes a belief that television has impoverished political discourse in America; Iyengar must not include the Daily Show in his versions of the news. While their framing is, like all the other networks, of the same episodic drivel that Bennet and Entman fault for the downfall of the free reporting integral to a functioning democracy, Comedy Central acknowledges the inanity of the war reporting with its catchy "Mess O'Potamia." In the Mess O'Potamia series, Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart and "foreign correspondents" mock not only the news as it comes from Iraq, but the correspondents that report it.

We've got a nation to build: Iraq. and, naturally, we're following the outline of our own country in outlining our goals for Iraq. Such as: taking away citizens guns [clip from the Washington Post shows "...surrender illegal weapons to U.S..."] and providing Universal Healthcare [clip from Los Angeles Times shows headline "Socialism Lives!" followed by "there will be quality healthcare for all."] I guess because we want Iraq to be... Canada? Thankfully there is some normalcy to still ground us - plenty of Iraqis still hate us.... In another development that is sure to make them love us, U.S. Forces began strikes this weekend against remaining loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Bath party. it's being called Operation Desert Scorpion, because it will be made up of a series of swift strikes [Stuart uses his hand to fake a "swift strike"]... doh!... like a scorpion... hazaah, wahh!... it's very different from Operation Desert Iguana, where you sit - and wait." [June 16 episode]