While cable news talking heads squawk and the blogosphere hums with dark theories of media complicity with either the left or the right, what actually shapes war coverage in the real world is often ignored. Too often, the snap judgments and on-the-fly decisions of the reporters, producers and editors in the arena go unexamined.
No more. There’s a great new report out today by American University School of Communication professors MJ Bear and Jane Hall that seeks to remedy the imbalance. The survey, which looks at coverage of the first 15 months of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, anonymously solicited responses from 210 reporters, editors, managers, producers and photographers both in Iraq and in stateside newsrooms. It offers a firsthand look into the decisions — often made on the run — which have shaped the information we receive about the war. The survey’s goals, according to its authors, were simply to “find out if perception about coverage was accurate in terms of how news was gathered and published.”
As such, it exposes in some detail the self-censorship practiced by many press outlets to screen out especially graphic material, such as gruesome photos or grisly descriptions that might repel a squeamish public.
Thirty percent of respondents “said they had rules in place limiting publication for dealing with sensitive information and images at the start of coverage.” Conversely, many editors admit that quite a bit of self-censorship went into content “after it was gathered but before it was published.” The breakdown looks like this: Of the respondents who were in newsrooms, 20 percent said material “was edited for reasons other than basic style and length,” while 15 percent of embedded reporters said “their organizations edited material for publication” to the point that the final version aired or printed did not accurately represent the story. “The real damage of the war on the civilian population was uniformly omitted,” wrote one respondent.
One revelation: Most media outlets used the Web to publish material not found in their print or broadcast editions, and nearly half of the embedded journalists “said they were able to publish content online that wasn’t available to print and broadcast audiences.” Of those, 29 percent felt that their Internet reports allowed for more comprehensive coverage overall. Harkening back to the censorship question, 7 percent of reporters “said their Internet reports allowed them to publish material deemed not appropriate for other media.”
As for editors and producers, of the 30 percent who said that they used the Web to publish additional material, “most” said that this was due to lack of space in print and broadcast “and not due to the nature of the content.”
As we all know, people often edit their own answers to surveys to make themselves look good — or to reflect the world they would like to exist, not the one that does exist. Still, the American University study is the first comprehensive attempt to understand the realities that shape war coverage, instead of tossing around half-baked partisan accusations and unfounded claims. It’s a good start in examining how news coming out of Iraq is tailored to reflect not what’s going on at ground level, but what editors think the public wants, or needs, to know.
–Paul McLeary
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.