WAR ON IRAK

Znet: War Coverage Goes Wall-To-Wall by Danny Schechter


NEW YORK, Mar 19, 2003 -- If you watch American television, it feels like New Year's eve with clocks counting down the minutes before the big ball drops in Times Square. Only this time, the big ball is likely to be a big bomb and the target is Baghdad, but the anticipation, even excitement is the same. That is especially so at the news networks that are planning to share footage from Baghdad and push their top shows onto cable outlets to clear time for wall-to-wall coverage.

With threat levels escalating in the U.S., journalists are also feeling threats in the field. The propaganda war has already moved into high gear. The Bush Administration strategy for managing news and spinning perception is well in place, with more than 500 reporters embedded in military units, with coverage restrictions to "guide" them. Their emphasis will be story telling, focusing on our soldiers. Human interest, not political interests, is the focus

A study by FAIR, the media watchdog group, found that anti-war views were conspicuous by their absence:

"Looking at two weeks of coverage (January 30 to February 12), FAIR examined the 393 on-camera sources who appeared in nightly news stories about Iraq on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The study began one week before and ended one week after Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 presentation at the U.N., a time of particularly intense debate about the idea of a war against Iraq on the national and international level.

More than two-thirds (267 out of 393) of the guests featured were from the United States. Of the U.S. guests, a striking 75 percent (199) were either current or former government or military officials. Only one of the official U.S. sources-- Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.) -- expressed skepticism or opposition to the war.

Even this was couched in vague terms: "Once we get in there, how are we going to get out, what's the loss for American troops going to be, how long we're going to be stationed there, what's the cost is going to be?" Kennedy asked on NBC Nightly News on February 5.

Similarly, when both U.S. and non-U.S. "Such a predominance of official sources virtually assures that independent and grassroots perspectives will be underrepresented," FAIR said.

The reporting will be closely managed. Robert Fisk of the Independent points to "a new CNN system of 'script approval' -- the iniquitous instruction to reporters that they send all their copy to anonymous officials in Atlanta to ensure it is suitably sanitized. This suggests that the Pentagon and the Department of State have nothing to worry about. Nor do the Israelis.