MEDIA FAIL: THE WAR IN IRAQ
Ryan C. Cooper
Gonzaga University
This year marked the 15th anniversary of the United States-led invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. That protracted conflict claimed more than 194,000 casualties, killed 4,489 U.S. service members, and cost the U.S. more than $2.2 trillion, according to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University (Trotta, 2013). In the years since then, the media establishment has conducted a collective soul-searching over its role in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Using the spiral of silence, cultural studies, and agenda-setting theories of communication (Griffin et al., 2015), I will look at some of the reasons why major news organizations seemingly enabled the Bush administration in its case for war.
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the mood in the country was mostly patriotic and nationalistic. In his documentary, Buying the War (Hughes, 2007), Moyers says journalists largely surrendered their independence to coincide with the national mood at the time. Anchors on many of the television networks wore American flag pins on their jackets. As a CNN producer during the war, I remember senior managers updating our graphics to include waving American flags and peppering them on-screen. This concerned me because our newscasts were airing around the world, and I felt it might give the impression on our international satellite feed that we were promulgating the U.S. government line. However, our managers did not want to cede ground to Fox News, which had covered its screen with more American flags than a Fourth of July parade. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll (Newport, 2003) conducted the day after hostilities began showed 76% of Americans favored the war against Iraq, while about the same number approved of how President George W. Bush was doing his job. Noelle-Neumann's (as cited in Griffin, 2008) spiral of silence theory details the “increasing pressure people feel to conceal their views when they think they are in the minority” (p. 372). With the popularity of the war sky-high, many journalists chose to avoid reporting on a viewpoint that was not shared by the majority of the country. Speaking to Moyers, Walter Isaacson, former chairman and CEO of CNN, said there was also a sense that journalists should not be too critical of a government leading us in wartime (Hughes, 2007). Those who did oppose the war and criticize the administration were called unpatriotic and un-American.
Perhaps the most damning admission of the media's failures came from former MSNBC correspondent Jessica Yellin. Appearing on Anderson Cooper's CNN program in 2008, Yellin said, “The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings” (Greenwald, 2008). She went on to say her bosses would turn down stories that were more critical of the administration. This perspective fits squarely with Stuart Hall's cultural studies theory, which examined corporate control of mass communication (Griffin et al., 2015). Hall (as cited in Griffin et al., 2015) believed that “news comes with a spin reflecting the interests of Western multinational corporations” (p. 343). Indeed, Yellin's view that her bosses at MSNBC pressured her to sanitize coverage is of particular interest when viewed under Hall's lens. At the time, MSNBC's parent company was General Electric, a major defense contractor, and GE was due to make billions of dollars off the war (Astore, 2017). In addition, some news managers may have believed the conflict could increase their television ratings and boost newspaper circulation figures. Perhaps all of this could explain why there was corporate pressure to suppress the dissenting, anti-war voices on television and in print.
By relegating dissenting viewpoints to the back of newspapers and leaving them out of newscasts, editors and producers actively focused on the pro-war movement. Media reporter Kurtz (as cited in Hughes, 2007) said in Buying the War that he found more than 140 front-page stories in The Washington Post that focused on the Bush Administration's rhetoric and its case for war (Hughes, 2007). By contrast, only a handful of front-page articles raised questions or offered the opposing viewpoint. This is an example of McCombs and Shaw's (as cited in Griffin et al., 2015) agenda-setting theory, which looks at how the media are responsible for framing stories to influence the way we think. By giving prominence to pro-war voices, the media were telling the public that those views were more salient. Griffin et al. (2015) write, “We pay greater attention to those issues and regard them as more important” (p. 378). Framing the case for war under the umbrella of the so-called “War on Terror” and offering little skepticism on the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, news reporting mostly appeared to accept the Bush administration's tenuous link between the 9/11 terror attacks and the Iraqi government. Kurtz (2013) wrote in an online op-ed on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq conflict, “All too often, skepticism was checked at the door, and the shaky claims of top officials and unnamed sources were trumpeted as fact.” Moyers' (Hughes, 2007) documentary spotlighted journalists from the now-defunct Knight Ridder newspaper chain who pushed back on the government's party line, but they could not compete with the stature of major newspapers. Boehlert (as cited in Hughes, 2007), author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, said in Buying the War, “If The New York Times thinks Saddam is on the precipice of mushroom clouds, then there is really no debate” (Hughes, 2007, 40:49). Many people consider The New York Times to be the national paper of record, and if their journalists are giving prominence to news reports suggesting that Iraq may have WMD, that carries more weight than a wire service story. Griffin et al. back up this assessment on the “behavioral effect” of the media's agenda, citing studies from Trumbo (as cited in Griffin et al., 2015) that examine how the media's priorities affect public opinion. In other words, the prevailing media narrative may have helped shape high public support for the war.
In the years following the start of the Iraq War, that high public support has fallen, but Americans remain divided as to whether it was all worth it. A Pew opinion survey in March of this year found American attitudes about evenly split, with 48% of respondents saying the U.S. made a mistake in using military force, and 43% saying it was the right decision (Oliphant, 2018). Either way, I would argue that there is more widespread agreement that the media did not do its job in holding the powerful accountable, questioning the government's faulty premises, and giving dissenting voices equal coverage. The spiral of silence, cultural studies, and agenda-setting theories offer some reasons why. In a sobering assessment, Kurtz (2013) called it “the media's greatest failure in modern times.”
References
Astore, W. (2017, July 18). Silencing War Criticism in the USA. Huffington Post. Retrieved from
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/silencing-war-criticism-in-the-usa_us_596df7a3e4b07f87578e6bd7
Greenwald, G. (2008, May 29). CNN/MSNBC Reporter: Corporate Executives Forced Pro-Bush,
Pro-War Narrative. Salon. Retrieved from https://www.salon.com/2008/05/29/yellin/
Griffin, E. (2008). A first look at communication theory (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
Education.
Griffin, E., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. (2015). A first look at communication theory (9th ed.).
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Hughes, K. (Producer). (2007, April 25). Buying the War [Video file]. Retrieved from
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html
Kurtz, H. (2013, March 11). Media's Failure on Iraq still stings [Editorial]. Retrieved from
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/11/opinion/kurtz-iraq-media-failure/index.html
Newport, F. (2003, March 24). Seventy-two percent of Americans support war against Iraq.
Retrieved from https://news.gallup.com/poll/8038/seventytwo-percent-americans-support-war-against-iraq.aspx
Oliphant, B. (2018, March 19). The Iraq War continues to divide the U.S. public, 15 years after it
began. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/19/iraq-war-
continues-to-divide-u-s-public-15-years-after-it-began/
Trotta, D. (2013, March 14). Iraq war costs U.S. more than $2 trillion: Study. Retrieved from
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSBRE92D0PG20130314