Oct. 21, 2003

War Coverage Goes for Ratings with Gadgets

Study Shows Emphasis on Weaponry Detracts from the Full Story

American television coverage of the war in Iraq focused overwhelmingly on the battle and tactics while ignoring diplomacy and public opinion according to TVNewscan, an ongoing research project led by professors Sean Aday and Steven Livingston from the School of Media and Public Affairs.

“Our initial results substantiate what was apparent to the careful viewer of TV war coverage: There was too much emphasis on the pyrotechnics of the war — the bombs and gee-whiz weapons — and not enough on the politics of the war,” Livingston said.

The study also found that most networks, including Al Jazeera and an Egyptian news broadcast, maintained a neutral, objective tone in about 90 percent of their coverage of the war. Fox News Channel stood out as the lone exception, with nearly 40 percent of its stories expressing a favorable tilt toward the US war effort.

“What we’ve seen since Sept. 11, 2001, is Fox openly questioning the traditional detached, objective model of journalism in their war coverage,” Aday said. “This was most evident in their use of the first person plural, such as ‘our troops,’ in reporting the war, something the other networks largely avoided.”

Aday pointed out, however, that there were interesting cultural differences between the US and Arab coverage.

“When the American news deviated from objective journalism, it tended to be favorable to the war, but when Arab channels did it was on the critical side,” he said.

The study analyzed nearly 2,000 stories about the war that aired between March 20 and April 20, 2003, on the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly newscasts, and from 5:30-6:30 pm on CNN and 6-6:30 pm on Fox News Channel. In addition, a comparable number of stories from a sample of nightly newscasts airing during the same time on Al Jazeera and ESC-1 (Egypt) also were analyzed. The study was co-founded by Livingston and former war correspondent Arthur Kent.

“This study is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Aday. “We plan to use this resource to assess the impact of embedded journalists and satellite technology on war coverage.” The TVNewscan project will study 5,000 hours of domestic and foreign broadcast war coverage recorded over 36 days.

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu