The Reportage Report Survey Assesses 'Tone' of Iraq Coverage
By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer
The conventional wisdom is that the media were aggressively skeptical during the war in Iraq, warning darkly of a possible quagmire even as U.S. forces rolled to victory. At other times, critics saw star-spangled networks rallying around the flag.
But a new study says the network coverage was -- if we can use this phrase without fear of being sued -- fair and balanced.
Fox News, widely viewed as an unabashed cheerleader for the Bush administration, was not the most positive network during those weeks of combat, according to the study. CBS's coverage of the so-called "Showdown With Saddam" was more positive than Fox's, while ABC, by a substantial margin, was the most negative on the war.
"If you're expecting to get the same tone of news no matter where you go, you're in for a surprise," says Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which conducted the study. "It's not a matter of what the reporters say; it's the sources they put on the air."
The group examined 1,131 stories on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts and Fox's "Special Report With Brit Hume" from March 19 to the fall of Tikrit on April 14. CNN and MSNBC were not included for budgetary reasons.
On average, on-air comments on the networks -- from anchors, reporters and those interviewed -- were half positive and half negative.
ABC's "World News Tonight" "was the most antiwar," the report says, with 34 percent of the on-air comments rated positive. "NBC Nightly News" was 53 percent positive, Fox's "Special Report" was 60 percent positive, and the "CBS Evening News" 74 percent positive.
Paul Slavin, executive producer of the ABC newscast, says: "I don't know how they characterize 'negative.' If we show antiwar demonstrations, is that negative? Is that neutral? . . . In some cases people were tremendously supportive of the administration but maybe questioning certain tactical decisions." Besides, he says, "ABC, possibly more than some of the others, foreshadowed some of the trouble we're finding in Iraq at this point."
"Special Report" aired the least combat footage and 47 percent fewer images of civilian casualties. Lichter recused himself from the research because he is a paid Fox commentator.
Brit Hume, Fox's Washington managing editor, says that "the war, up to the point of the collapse of Saddam's regime, was pretty successful. There were points where other media fell into the trap of reporting negative scenarios. That was a journalistic error, in my opinion."
CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius says that content studies "are always highly subjective. . . . We believe our coverage was fair and represents an accurate picture of the facts as well as a responsible cross section of public opinion."
Seventy percent of the evaluations of the military's performance were positive on the four programs, with Fox leading the pack. On "Special Report," columnist Michael Barone pronounced the war "the most amazing military success in human history." On CBS, Dan Rather said: "Facts on the ground indicate that overall, from a military standpoint, the invasion continues to go well."
Was the United States justified in invading Iraq? Eighty percent of those addressing the question on ABC were against the war, compared with 54 percent of those on NBC, 39 percent of those on Fox and 5 percent of those on CBS.
Decisions on which interviews to air were crucial. ABC showed an Iraqi man saying: "Saddam Hussein is better than George Bush. Saddam would never allow any of this looting." CBS quoted a Marine as saying the Iraqis were "killing their own people and trying to blame a lot of it on the U.S. and the British."
If someone gets around to analyzing the postwar reporting, there is little doubt, in light of mounting U.S. casualties, that the coverage would be highly negative.
Footnote: On Aug. 26, Hume reported that "U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California, which is roughly the same geographical size." California has 6.6 murders a day, he said; U.S. troops have been incurring about 1.7 deaths a day. The problem: California has 34 million people, but there are 145,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq. "Admittedly it was a crude comparison, but it was illustrative of something," Hume says.
[...]
Power Picture
Some White House reporters who accompanied George Bush to a military base in California are grumbling about having to wear press tags emblazoned with a picture of the president in a flight suit from his aircraft-carrier landing.
"The press advance office tries to include a small picture that reflects the theme of the event," says spokesman Scott McClellan. He says the "nice keepsake" shouldn't make any scribe feel like "a propagandist for the president."