Media

New York Times editorial: "Watching Iraq" (3/23/03):

What most of us know of Iraq we know from just the kind of television we are watching now. It's a nation seen over the correspondent's shoulder, or through the windshield of a fighting vehicle moving into a beige void. But in a way, America knows a great deal about Iraq. We actually know every inch of the country. United Nations inspectors have explored it in the ways that interest us most. Surveillance satellites are constantly watching overhead. We've been making fixed-wing surveillance flights since before the first gulf war. Perhaps in some declassified future, those photographs will serve the same purpose as the aerial photos the Luftwaffe took of England in the late summer of 1940. Now, they provide a clear snapshot of the country as it was, an archeological benchmark against which to measure all future change.

" In Iraq Crisis, Networks Are Megaphones for Official Views" (FAIR, 3/18/03):

Network newscasts, dominated by current and former U.S. officials, largely exclude Americans who are skeptical of or opposed to an invasion of Iraq, a new study by FAIR has found. of all

Among the major findings in a two-week study (1/30/03=2/12/03) of on-camera network news sources quoted on Iraq:

• Seventy-six percent of all sources were current or former officials, leaving little room for independent and grassroots views. Similarly, 75 percent of U.S. sources (199/267) were current or former officials.
• At a time when 61 percent of U.S. respondents were telling pollsters that more time was needed for diplomacy and inspections (2/6/03), only 6 percent of U.S. sources on the four networks were skeptics regarding the need for war.
• Sources affiliated with anti-war activism were nearly non-existent. On the four networks combined, just three of 393 sources were identified as being affiliated with anti-war activism-- less than 1 percent. Just one of 267 U.S. sources was affiliated with anti-war activism-- less than half a percent.

Robert Fisk, "The War of Misinformation Has Begun" (Independent, 3/16/03), on how information about the prosecution of the war will likely be manipulated.

David Greenberg on American vs. overseas press coverage of the war crisis in the Washington Post, 3/16/03:

American journalists tend to be more squeamish than their European counterparts about setting the news agenda. If the leading political players don't get worked up about a would-be scandal, the press (usually) balks at arrogating that role to itself. European papers, on the other hand, allow themselves more freedom in deciding what's news, independent of official say-so.

Yet we should be cautious about ascribing differing American and foreign assessments of news stories to national traits or institutions. After all, not long ago the U.S. media would have treated these recent episodes as huge scandals -- the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers or My Lai or the 18-minute gap in Richard Nixon's Watergate tapes.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a simmering American skepticism about the motives and morality of our leaders boiled over. . . . And then the mood of active distrust began to subside. It was as if Americans, having faced the darkest elements of their system, couldn't bear to see any more. . . . Ever since [9/11], the public, including the press, has ascribed to the president a degree of goodwill unprecedented in the post-1960s era.

Overseas, however, events since Sept. 11 have led people in the opposite direction. Suspicion of U.S. motives has escalated; willingness to cut the Bush administration some slack has plunged. Where Americans' trust in their leaders seems distressingly high, as if the Nixon years have been forgotten, foreigners' faith in us is troublingly low. In that divide lie the roots of our irreconcilable takes on the news, and our contrary fears for the future.

Antonia Zerbisias: US readers turn to the Canadian press for better war coverage (3/13/03)