[Media-watch] FAIR study finds democracy poorly served by war coverage

[Sigi D]

This is from the website
http://www.fair.org/extra/0305/warstudy.html
"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."
Best 
Sigi

Extra!, May/June 2003

Amplifying Officials, Squelching Dissent

FAIR study finds democracy poorly served by war
coverage

By Steve Rendall & Tara Broughel 

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. 

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. 

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