Global Media Journal

  ABC, CNN, CBS, FOX, and NBC on the Frontlines
 

Dr. Olugbenga Christopher Ayeni
Eastern Connecticut State University

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    Over the years, the media have become reliable sources of information on events and happenings from far and near. Agenda setting scholars corroborate the fact that our dependence on the media for news and information has shaped and reinforced our perceptions of the world around us. The mass media continue to set the news agenda for dominant events, issues and policies that subsequently become popular in our social discourse.

    Media professionals’ credibility is gauged by their objectivity and detachment, reflected in the level of transparency exhibited in subject selection, treatment, packaging, and dissemination of news. (Watkins, 2001) However, selection packaging and processing of such news stories are subject to, and mediated by organizational gate keeping, ideological slant, power relations, self censorship and sometimes outright bias.

    All of these can be subsumed under framing, or the process of negotiating, interpreting and assigning meanings to a complex world in a manner that gives us a better understanding. After all, news has been described as a manufactured product and by implication each news product is bound to bear a unique and specific stamp of identity and quality depending on who is rendering it. (Chomsky, 1988, Tuchman, 1978)

      The purpose of this chapter is to scrutinize the second Iraqi war in light of attendant uproar that preceded the hostilities, the hype and anticipation that heralded the war of “shock and awe”, and the unique challenge thrust upon the embedded journalists. The journalist carries the onerous responsibility of interpreting our sometimes unintelligible world in a manner that provides some sanity and direction. However, this task is not made easier by the interplaying factors of personal judgments of news selection, organizational and ideological pressures which lead to framing the discourse. The scope of the information and the speed of its processing, which are triggered by time pressures, necessitate the need for assigning the information into cognitive categories. (Gitlin, 1980).

    In an attempt to present the news and to make sense of our world journalists select, organize and emphasize some aspects of the world reality while ignoring some others. It is these “patterns of presentations, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion” that is known as framing. (Gitlin, 1980, p. 7).  Entman (1993) says: “Framing essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described.” (p. @@@@  )

    The Iraq war news dominated the mass media months before hostilities began in Baghdad. Tagged the “war of shock and awe”, the second war in Iraq was for several months, and still is, the dominant news menu months after President Bush declared victory in May, 2003. This study looks at issues from a trifocal dimension of the news coverage before and during war, the role of Washington power brokers in influencing what gets reported, and the role of the embedded reporter in the selection of sources and what eventually gets into public view. In the days and months preceding the war, there were the wild and wide protests that trailed the news of the impending war against Iraq. The United States was criticized by some for not exploring fully the diplomatic recourse to resolving the melee while others argued that going after Saddam Hussein over veiled speculations that he had piles of WMD was rather a brazen act of aggression on the part of a blood thirsty administration. Concurrently there was the propaganda machinery of power brokers in Washington bent on fanning the embers of war through a process of media “demonization” of Saddam Hussein.

    Protest rallies were held in many world capitals by anti war activists and it may well have been one war that attracted the most vociferous criticisms from far and near. There is always a conflict in the news media’s choices of news frames amply demonstrated by the opposing stances taken by the forces in favor of collective action in the forms of protests, and those of the authorities who wanted to project the status quo frame of law and order. (Wolsfeld, Avraham & Isam, 2000).

    The media serve messages to their audiences with a view to conveying realities to them using specific frames of references. Beneath the media messages and the associated meanings deciphered by the receiving audience reside the underlying roles of the reporter’s frames through selection or omission of some aspects of reality. It is such selection, omission or emphasis, also known as salience that “set boundaries on the interpretation of an event.” (Phalen & Elgan, 2001 p. 302)

    Journalists carry their individual biases and are further burdened by journalistic norms and deadlines, search for scoops and other contingent factors that limit the scope of understanding for the message. This is a result of the salience, emphasis or lack of it, that often accompanies any message or text. Entman (1993) emphasizes the view that what is excluded from a story or a text is equally as important as what was said. Salience is thus achieved through “highlighting bits of information through placement, repetition, and associating them with culturally familiar symbols”. (Entman, p. 53)

    This paper employs the use of textual analysis of frames and qualitative content analysis to study the reliance of the news networks on different sources for information about the war. The selected networks are Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC which were chosen to provide a mix of cable news channel and broadcast channels. The period of the study spans three phases namely, before, during and after the hostilities. The data for this study was collected from the transcripts of news casts collected from Lexis-Nexis Academic.

    Research questions that come to mind are: How extensive was the coverage of the war in Iraq, especially by the selected television networks? Which sources were relied upon by the news media for the news that we were served as the viewers on the war? Based on the sources used how much balance was shown in the use of these sources? How far did the viewpoints of those sources coincide with those of the power brokers in Washington to further their propaganda agenda?

    Media coverage of wars has come a long way to what it is today where embedded reporters and the magic of technology bring real time actions and images from the battle front to our living rooms. The reports and the coverage of the American civil war relied predominantly on still photography while the First and Second World Wars exploited the mobilizing role of radio to rally support and give account of the battles. It was not until the Vietnam War, the first truly televised war, that television took the frontlines.

    The Vietnam War also granted unlimited access to the battlefront by reporters and images from the battle front further deepened the resentments and protests against the war at home. Whereas the news scene for the coverage of the first Iraqi war, tagged “Dessert Storm”, was dominated by the CNN, aided by doctored Pentagon input, the most recent war was pretty open, especially for journalists who wanted to be embedded with the troop formations for the purpose of close real time coverage.

    The new role of the embedded journalists has been matched by the technological advance in the immediacy of news coverage and delivery. The fact that reporters can now feed live stories to the news rooms from battle fronts has brought a new dimension to war coverage, a trend referred to as “militainment” by Schwartz (2003). The excitement and drama of live war coverage has its benefits and its downsides. While images of the battle front filter into our living rooms live, gory details sometimes pass through to the audiences and further dull our sensitivities or make us recoil in anger.

    It is therefore necessary to look at the issue of news selection, choice of sources relied upon and the language used in most of the news stories that came out of Baghdad during the ongoing war in Iraq. The literature on news selection or framing is as wide as there are topics. They have been organized into two major areas namely: issue specific and generic news frames (de Vreeese, 1999). Whereas issue specific news framing focuses on specific events or news items and allow for a more detailed insight, generic news frames are broader in scope and may span different times and contexts. (p.108).This article belongs in the category of issue specific frames since the scope is limited solely to the coverage of a specific issue, the war in Iraq.

    Western media have often been condemned for a lopsided view of the world outside of their immediate environment, citing jaundiced reporting and framing among other reasons for that lapse. This argument rests on the premise that the Western media enjoy a political-economic advantage over the less developed world such that events that happen in the latter region are either framed negatively to fit the hegemonic view of the elites or ignored altogether. (Phalen & Elgan, 2001). The interplay of power, politics and the systematic process of social stratification of news is evident in news processing mechanisms often adopted by the Western media, and calls for closer scrutiny.

    Scholars use news frame analysis to underscore the all embracing power of meaning conveyed by the texts or message. The frames so selected by the reporters elicit the impact of the messages on the recipients, their understanding, interpretation, and response to the text. This is because journalists in the process of framing the news organize their messages in contexts that articulate specific meanings.

     “The frames of a news portrait can be enlarged so that media reports may penetrate the consciousness of a mass public that is minimally aware of most specific issues and events. Or the frame can be shrunk to miniaturize an event, diminishing the amount, prominence, and duration of coverage, and thus mass awareness.” (Entman, 1991, p.10).

    Audiences rely on the issues presented in the media to form the basis for their comprehension of the world around them. However, in the process of creating this reality and ultimately impacting the interpretation of the recipients of the messages, the underlying roles played by the reporters in the way the messages are framed need attention. Selection or omission of those issues that constitute the news frames shape perception of the audiences in forming their reality, and such selection, emphasis, or omission, also referred to as salience, “sets boundaries on the interpretation of an event.” (Phalen, p. 302). Salience is achieved through “highlighting bits of information through placement, repetition, and associating them with culturally familiar symbols.” (Entman, 1993, pp. 51-58)

    Many factors are responsible for issue salience or framing in news processing and they include individual journalist’s biases, institutional limitations set by the news organizations, journalistic norms, deadlines, or the overbearing influence of official news sources. All of these factors set to limit real and true understanding of reality and since every event or issue is bound to have more than one angle to it, the few specifics selected by a journalist cannot constitute the whole picture. What is excluded from a story or text is equally as important as what is actually said in the story. (p.53).

    The premise of analyzing the sources relied upon by the network news in the Iraq war is based on the assumption that the current war in Iraq, unlike any before it, relied heavily on the military for access to the battle front. When the mass media are involved in the coverage of hostilities between their state and another, reliance on the military, and domestic elite sources within the government, become almost inevitable.

    News media organizations rely on sources for diversity in perspectives to bring in views from all those likely to lend new insights into events or issues. (Reese et al, 1994). In many cases, the mass media tend to impose self censorship on themselves when it comes to the issue of conflict or hostilities between the one state and another. In hostile environments such as during wars or military expeditions, the government resiliently protects its forte under the guise of protecting national security. The government position is that an “untrammeled media may stab the military in the back, and that unregulated images generate intrinsically anti-war effects. As a result states have taken considerable pains to manipulate the presentation of war.”(Carruthers, 2000, p. 9).

    The reliance of the news networks is made more inescapable by the many constraints that accompany the coverage of hostilities. Many reporters need the military protection to be able to reach the hot spots on the battle ground. When one looks at the bits and pieces of information that the reporters send in from the frontlines, the analysis by selected experts, and a high dosage of Pentagon briefings, whatever is served the audience becomes a blurry representation. Donald Rumsfeld referred to the stories out of Iraq as “slices” of news, suggesting that there are bound to be ambiguities and hidden news elements.

       “You take every bit of information that you have from embeds, and you treat it as a tiny slice of the battlefield. You compare that to what you’re getting from the military briefings, al Jazeera, Iraq Television, and every other conceivable source and you weigh each piece depending on the source, and talk to your analysts. Then you drop it all in a big bag, shake it up, and hope that what you come up with is some sort of clarity.” (McClellan, 2003, p 1)

      The influential role of news sources in the process of inventing reality compel an examination of the sources relied upon by the news networks during the war in Iraq. According to Carruthers, “Reporters don’t necessarily make the news but their sources, their organizations and other framework in which they operate “manufacture” news and thus invent reality.” (Carruthers, 2000, p. 17). News organizations in the United States have been accused of closely following state bureaucratic structures and most of the Gulf War stories of 1991 actually relied on a triangular model of the Pentagon, White House and the State department. (Carruthers, 2000).

    The selected networks NBC, FOX, ABC, CNN and CBS were chosen to get a feel for the coverage of the news since majority of Americans receive their evening news through one or more of these sources. Los Angeles Times poll results showed that 70% of Americans got most of their news from cable-TV. “Nielsen data showed that the number of average daily viewers for MSNBC and CNN increased more than 300% during the war, Fox (the most viewed cable news channel) more than 288%.” (Hiebert, 2003, p. 252) The time frame for the news casts was prime time from eight at night to 10 p.m. CNN had always pioneered in the area of 24 hour news coverage and it was important to review the perspectives presented by the leader of cable news network. News casts were grouped into three major phases from October 2002 through March, 2004.

    The first phase contains news stories covered in the run off to the hostilities. Most of the pre-war reports of the protests needed to be within the database to determine if there is any link between the news coverage of the war protests and the news that were covered during the hostilities. The last phase covers the news stories of events following the official cessation of hostilities in May, 2003, when George Bush declared “victory”. Since his victory speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, over 400 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq, underscoring the fact that the war in Iraq is still relevant in not just news coverage but also in policy decisions post Saddam Hussein.

    Data was collected from early to late evening news casts for the five news networks namely ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, CNN News with Aaron Brown, NBC Nightly News, ABC, and Fox Special Report. The primary unit of analysis for the study is news on the Iraq war. The main focus of the study is the sources cited, interviewed or featured in discussion sessions during the telecasts by all the networks during the period under study. These sources were categorized, counted, compared, and analyzed. Identified news sources are categorized into official, unofficial, military, non-military and experts.

    The hypothesis is that the sources selected for interviews, discussions, and opinion expression would signal the news tilt of the news networks.  Official sources are those that represent the viewpoints of the United States government representatives and other government representatives of other countries considered allies in the war in Iraq. Unofficial sources are those viewpoints expressed by others who are not in government or who do not claim to express the views of the government. Other categories are those that dealt with expert sources, or those who were presumed to be competent on social issues as a result of their experience or role in other spheres of life.

    The study sought to determine the reliance of the selected news media on sources and determine if the choices of the sources could be linked to the framing or salience of the issues covered by these news organizations. All the sources interviewed or cited in the evening news segments on the war in Iraq presented by the selected networks were identified and counted. Beyond this, the text of the news was scanned for context, while the use of certain referents was noted for consistency.

    The study of sources is important because much as the reporters may claim to be objective in their reports by excluding personal biases, they are sometimes entangled in the web of source credibility. This is so because sources have their individual preferences and opinions, expression of which forms the basis of public reality of issues covered by the mass media. The selection of the sources based on their preferences and number could skew the issues of the day one way or another and distort reality. Thus source selection must reflect fairness and balance through equal coverage. Bias may be created if in covering events and issues, the reporters fail to reflect divergent composition of the sources cited. Bias is a “perceived attribute of a news source whereby the individual news source, or the group the news represents, has a clear, vested interest in a cause or action relative to maintaining or changing the status quo.” (Rouner, et al, 1999, p. 43).

    The sources were identified by their titles and designations by which they were introduced before the reporters interviewed them. Each of the sources used for information that served as resource for presenting the news were grouped based on the categories earlier on identified. The grouping enabled the researcher to determine which types of sources were relied upon the most, how often and how balanced were these sources used in relation to all of the sources that they could possibly have used. The results were staggering in terms of how dependent the news networks in the United States relied more on sources close or friendly to the United States in getting their news.

    Over six hundred sources were identified from the 3597 total news casts for the selected five networks covering the entire 17 month period under study. This did not include live feeds from embedded journalists who were stationed in the battle front. NBC’s 176 myriad of sources were made up of a total of 39 official sources or 22.15% while military sources, including retired and active duty military personnel totaled 29 or 15.9% and the expert sources equaled 15.6% and all other sources including civilian sources, families of military personnel totaled 23.4%.

    The sources used by CNN was mostly from military personnel, accounting for about 27% of the sources while official sources provided 21% of the news material, and others like commentators, civilians from across the world, provided a hefty 42%. This may be due to the worldwide recognition of CNN and its ability to attract commentaries from people from far and near who may not necessarily be directly involved with the hostilities. Fox relied heavily on official sources and has been criticize for being overtly biased in its war coverage in Iraq. Almost 58% of the sources used were from the United States government either working for the Pentagon, The White House, or State Department.

    In the case of CBS official sources of news were use almost 30 % o the time while military sources were used 30% of the time and other sources accounted for 31.3% and Expert sources were used 12% of the time. In the case of ABC, which had less than the other networks in terms of coverage of the war, 63% of the news was from official sources while military and other sources were used 23% and 20 % respectively.

    Overall, of the more than 600 sources categorized, official sources accounted for 33% of the news while military sources accounted for 26% of the news stories. It has been argued that the media often take sides of the institutionalized sources when it comes to issue of covering conflicts. This is because the media rely on the convenience provided by traditional sources of official informants. Invariably, those who are likely to provide alternative definitions through their critical views will not just have minimal access but may also be attacked if their commentaries are considered as unpatriotic. (Avraham, 2000). The hegemonic role of the elite media and their sources becomes fiercer when there is a perceived threat to the agenda set forth by the dominant power brokers.

    The other striking fact from the categories of sources was that military sources, which are most certainly another version of the dominant view of the government in uniform, dominated the source of our Iraq war news. Close to 30% of the sources were from military personnel, either speaking in official capacities as representatives of the state or as analyst of the military exercises. It may be worth considering that the media selects those sources that are television friendly, not necessarily those who have something to say but someone who can say it in the most entertaining way. Schwartz (2003) calls this “militainment”, the reveling in the suspense, excitement and the drama of war. The example of the “rescue” of former POW Private Jessica Lynch has been described as a classic case of made-for-television razzmatazz.

    There is almost a conspiracy theory surrounding the reliance of the news media on sources, and journalists are wont to argue that objectivity is their watchword. The issue is not that journalists are biased or not in their presentation of facts. Rather, it is in the selection of those who present those facts to us and create a reality for the audience that this chapter argues about. There is evidence that media often “justifies their stance on what is “showable” and “sayable” by hinging it on public sensibilities when in reality it is more of state sensitivities.” (Carruthers, 2000, p. 20).

    So when we talk about the dominant elite, power brokers and Washington muscle, and their hegemonic strangle hold on every social institution including the mass media, “we do not refer to a dominant ideology per se, but to practices and relations which predominate in structuring definitions of social reality.” (Goldman & Rajagopal, 1991, p. 20). News has been merchandised, and the standardized format of reporting that calls for heavy dose of Pentagon juice and White House spin follow the pattern that suits the process of selling news as a commodity. For the expert sources that were relied upon for stories, reporters invite them to participate because of the presumed knowledge in the area under discussion.

    In looking at the sources alone, it would be premature to determine whether the stories were slanted or not. However, if one weighs in on the fact that some sources were relied upon more than others, it could be safe to say that news balance, one of the tenets of journalism practice, has been jeopardized based on the heavy reliance on institutionalized sources for the war in Iraq. Despite the fact that 600 American soldiers were embedded in the military formations, According to Lacy, Fico, & Simon (1991), “fairness or balance in any given news story is typically a matter of affording equal coverage of opposing views.”(p. 363).

    It could be argued that based on the skewed reliance of the media on official and military sources most of the time, bias must have set in to compromise the truth and objectivity credo of the journalism profession. Bias is defined as “a perceived attribute of a news source whereby the individual news source, or the group the news source represents, has a clear vested interest in a cause or action relative to maintaining or changing the status quo.” (Rouner, Slater & Buddenbaum, 1999, p. 43). Whoever the source may be, reporters can easily hazard a guess the ideological, political or economic interests of a source. The results here have shown a discrepancy between the acclaimed journalistic value of presenting balanced and exhaustive views of issues and the actual process of news gathering and dissemination.

    Overall based on the number of stories recorded from the Lexis Nexis database comprising stories of the Iraq war, the first research question about the extent of the coverage is evident. The story of the war in Iraq has continued to dominate the network news coverage for the past seventeen or so months since the first indication of impending war was discerned. In relation to other topical events that happened in the period since the war in Iraq, the war coverage has dominated.

    On the question of which sources were relied upon by the networks for information about the war, four distinct groups of sources were identified and their contributions to the news were determined by the number of times they were consulted or interviewed by the reporters. The role of sources in shaping the news content cannot be overemphasized especially the role played by the sources in influencing the processing of the messages by the audiences. Studies such as those of O’Keefe, 1990, and Chartprasert, 1993, have all studied the role of sources credibility on message content and impact.

     The skewed proportion of those who had close affiliations with the power brokers, namely official and military sources, could be indicative of a covert propaganda on the part of the establishment to ensure that the position of the government receives media attention as much as possible. Hiebert, 2003 made a reference to a commitment on the part of the US government to win the war in the mass media as much as the war at the battle front in Iraq. He also cited Berkowitz’s observation in his book: “The new face of war: How war will be fought in the 21^st Century” that, “Today the ability to collect, communicate, process and protect information is the most important factor defining military power.” (p. 244).

    Hiebert’s position is that the war in Iraq had propaganda boldly written all over it, especially the well managed Pentagon briefings, the “tens of millions of Arabic language leaflets urging the Iraqis to abandon Saddam or lay down their arms, and loudspeakers beamed the thunderous recorded sound of British challenger tanks to startle the Iraqis into surrendering.” (p. 247). Donald Rumsfeld and other Pentagon spokespersons personified the hegemonic role of the government as they chaperoned the media through the fog of the war in Iraq. (embedded) “Journalists were given some guidance about what they could and could not report, and who they could and could not talk to. But the general impression left with the public was that there was no government censorship.” (Hiebert, 2003, p. 250)

    Did the role of the embedded journalist in Iraq help provide convergence or divergence of opinions on the Iraqi war? Perhaps not, says Hiebert, who said that the action was inimical to a balanced view of the war since the views that the journalists saw and were allowed to cover coincided exactly with the objective of the government to make the war more popular in the face of worldwide criticisms. Since the war news coverage by the television cable and networks were found to have been favorably skewed in favor of government and its ideological allies, the totality of the coverage suffers from a fundamental rule of journalism, that of news balance.  

    Matz (2003) was an embedded reporter for one of the newspapers and he remarked that, there were two wars in Iraq, “the war I saw and wrote about as a print journalist embedded with a tank company of the Army’s 3^rd Infantry Division (Mechanized). Then there was the war that many Americans saw, or wanted to see, on TV.” ( Martz, 2003, p.30). This view was corroborated by another embedded Los Angeles Times reporter, David Zucchino, who said, “I ate with the troops, I complained with them about the choking dust, the lack of water, our foul smelling bodies, and our scaly, rotting feet. I could not interview survivors of Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers… I had no idea what ordinary Iraqis were experiencing.” (Periodical Observer Section, p.97).

    The coverage of war has changed for ever with the new found role for reporters at the frontlines as embeds, getting real life images from the battle ground and giving new meaning to war news. As part of that, we have the overriding influence of Hollywood make believe and the overbearing role of the government propaganda machinery. The face of war coverage will change for the better, especially from the government hegemonic position while it will bode ill for the audience who will have to settle for less than objective and balanced news. 

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About the Author

Olugbenga C. Ayeni is Assistant Professor at Eastern Connecticut State University.  Dr. Ayeni teaches mass communication in the Department of Communication. His research interests include international communication and conflict and mass media organizations.