> FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting 130 W. 25th Street New
> York, NY 10001 Slanted Sources in NewsHour and Nightline Kosovo Coverage
>
> May 5, 1999
>
> A FAIR analysis of sources on ABC's Nightline and PBS's NewsHour during
> the first two weeks of the bombing of Yugoslavia found an abundance of
> representatives of the U.S. government and NATO, along with many other
> supporters of the NATO bombing. Opponents of the airstrikes received
> scant attention, however; in almost all stories, debate focused on
> whether or not NATO should supplement bombing with ground troops, while
> questions about the basic ethics and rationales of the bombing went
> largely unasked.
>
> FAIR's survey was based on a search of the Nexis database for stories on
> the war between March 25 and April 8, identifying both guests who were
> interviewed live and sources who spoke on taped segments. Sources were
> classified according to the institutions or groups they represented, and
> by the opinions they voiced on NATO's military involvement in
> Yugoslavia.
>
> Of 291 sources that appeared on the two shows during the study period,
> only 24--or 8 percent--were critics of the NATO airstrikes. Critics were
> 10 percent of sources on the NewsHour, and only 5 percent on Nightline.
> Only four critics appeared live as interview guests on the shows, 6
> percent of all discussion guests. Just one critic appeared as a guest on
> Nightline during
> the entire two-week time period.
>
> The largest single source group, 45 percent, was composed of current or
> former U.S. government and military officials, NATO representatives and
> NATO troops.
>
> On Nightline, this group accounted for a majority of sources (55
> percent), while providing a substantial 39 percent on the NewsHour. It
> also provided the largest percentage of live interviewees: 50 percent on
> Nightline (six of 12) and 42 percent on the NewsHour (24 of 57).
> (Numerous U.S. aviators who appeared on Nightline's 3/29/99 edition were
> left out of the study, because their identities could not be
> distinguished.)
>
> Overall, the most commonly cited individuals from this group were
> President Bill Clinton (14 cites), State Department spokesperson James
> Rubin (11) and NATO spokesperson David Wilby (10). Of course, these
> sources were uniformly supportive of NATO's actions. A quote from the
> NewsHour's Margaret Warner (3/31/99) reveals the homogeneity of a
> typical source pool: "We get four perspectives now on NATO's mission and
> options from four retired military leaders."
>
> Former government officials were seldom more critical of NATO's
> involvement in Yugoslavia. Cited less than one-third as often as current
> politicians, former government officials mainly confined their
> skepticism to NATO's reluctance to use ground troops. Bob Dole
> (Nightline, 3/31/99) voiced the prevailing attitude when he said, "I
> just want President Clinton=85not to get wobbly."
>
> Albanian refugees and KLA spokespeople made up 18 percent of sources (17
> percent on the NewsHour, 19 percent on Nightline), while relief workers
> and members of the U.N. Commission for Refugees accounted for another 4
> percent on NewsHour and 2 percent on Nightline. Sources from these
> groups also provided 4 percent of live interviewees on the NewsHour and
> 25 percent on Nightline.
>
> These sources stressed the Kosovar refugees' desperation, and expressed
> gratitude for NATO's airstrikes. Said one KLA member (Nightline,
> 4/1/99), "The NATO bombing has [helped and] has been accepted by the
> Albanian people." Although one refugee (Nightline, 4/1/99) suggested
> otherwise--"We run away because of NATO bombing, not because of Serbs"
> --all other sources in this group either defended or did not comment on
> NATO's military
> involvement in the conflict.
>
> Those most likely to criticize NATO--Yugoslavian government officials,
> Serbians and
> Serbian-Americans--accounted for only 6 percent of sources on the
> NewsHour and 9 percent on Nightline. Overall, only two of these sources
> appeared as live interviewees: Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesperson
> Nebojsa Vujovic (Nightline, 4/6/99) and Yugoslav Ambassador to the
> United Nations Vladislav Jovanovic (NewsHour, 4/1/99). This group's
> comments contrasted radically with statements made by members of other
> source groups, e.g., calling NATO's bombing "unjustified aggression"
> (Nightline, 4/6/99), and charging that NATO is "killing Serbian kids."
> (NewsHour, 4/2/99)
>
> On Nightline, no American sources other than Serbian-Americans
> criticized NATO's airstrikes. On the NewsHour, there were seven
> non-Serbian American critics (4 percent of all sources); these included
> schoolchildren, teachers and college newspaper editors, in addition to a
> few journalists. Three out of the seven American sources who criticized
> the NATO bombing appeared as live interviewees, while the rest spoke on
> taped segments.
> Officials from non-NATO national governments other than Yugoslavia, such
> as Russia's and Macedonia's, accounted for only 2 percent of total
> sources (3 percent on the NewsHour, 0 percent on Nightline) and added
> only four more critical voices overall. Only twice did a government
> official from these countries appear as a live interviewee (NewsHour,
> 3/30/99, 4/7/99).
>
> Eleven percent of sources came from American and European journalists: 7
> percent on Nightline, 13 percent on the NewsHour. This group also
> claimed 17 percent of all live interviews on Nightline and 40 percent on
> the NewsHour. In discussions with these sources, which tended to focus
> on the U.S. government's success in justifying its mission to the
> public, independent political analysis was often replaced by suggestions
> for how the U.S. government could cultivate more public support for the
> bombing.
>
> Three independent Serbian journalists also appeared--two on the NewsHour
> and one on Nightline--but they did not add any voices to the
> anti-bombing camp. Instead, they spoke about the Serbian government's
> censorship of the independent media. Of a total of 34 journalists used
> as sources on both shows, only four opposed the NATO airstrikes. Three
> of these four appeared as live interviewees, and all four appeared on
> the NewsHour.
>
> Academic experts--mainly think tank scholars and professors--made up
> only 2 percent of sources on the NewsHour and 5 percent on Nightline.
> (Experts who are former government or military officials were counted in
> the former government or military categories; these accounted for five
> sources.) On the NewsHour, the only think tank spokesperson who appeared
> was from the military-oriented Rand Corporation, while Nightline's two
> were both from the centrist Brookings Institution. Just two experts
> appeared in live interviews on the NewsHour, and no expert source was
> interviewed live on Nightline. While these percentages reflect a dearth
> of scholarly opinion in
> both shows, even the experts who were consulted didn't add much
> diversity to the discussion; none spoke critically of NATO's actions.
>
> On a Nightline episode in early April that criticized Serbian media
> (4/1/99), Ted Koppel declared: "The truth is more easily suppressed in
> an authoritarian country and more likely to emerge in a free country
> like ours." But given the obvious under-representation of NATO critics
> on elite American news shows, independent reporting seems to also be a
> foreign concept to U.S. media.
>
> This report was researched and written by Margaret Farrand, a history
> student at Columbia University.