The patriotism police also patrolled American radio. Clear Channel Communications owns more than 1,200 radio stations (approximately half of the U.S. total), five times more than its closest competitors, CBS and ABC. Its executives have not hesitated to use their power to impose ideological direction. Days after the 9/11 attacks, a Clear-Channel executive circulated a memo with a list of songs that stations were asked to avoid playing in the wake of the tragedy, including “Peace Train” by Cat Stevens and “Imagine” by John Lennon.1 In the weeks leading up to war with Iraq, Clear Channel stations offered financial sponsorship and on-air promotion for pro-war “Rallies for America.”2 A number of Clear Channel stations also pulled the Dixie Chicks from their playlists after the group's lead singer, Natalie Maines, told fans in London that they were ashamed to be from the same state as President Bush. Only a few days previously, Clear Channel Entertainment, the company's concert tour promotional arm, had been enthusiastically promoting its co-sponsorship of 26 upcoming concerts in the Chicks' upcoming “Top of the World Tour.”3 In Colorado Springs, two disk jockeys were suspended from Clear Channel affiliate KKCS for defying the ban. Station manager Jerry Grant, admitted that KKCS had received 200 calls from listeners, 75% of which wanted the ban lifted. Nevertheless, he said, he gave the DJs “an alternative: stop it now and they'll be on suspension, or they can continue playing them and when they come out of the studio they won't have a job.”4 Cumulus Media, another radio conglomerate that owns 262 stations, also banned the Dixie Chicks from all of its country stations.5 Nationally syndicated radio talker Don Imus told his producer to screen out guests “who come on and whine about how the President failed to explore all diplomatic avenues. Just drop it, because I'm not interested in having that discussion.”6
Greater diversity could be found in the print media, but not much. Journalism professor Todd Gitlin tabulated editorials that appeared in the Washington Post during a 12-week period shortly before the onset of war and found that “hawkish op-ed pieces numbered 39, dovish ones 12 – a ratio of more than 3-to-1.”1
In addition to restricting the number of anti-war voices allowed to appear on television, the media engaged in selective presentation. The main voices that television viewers saw opposing the war came from a handful of TV celebrities such as Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Janeane Garofalo and Susan Sarandon – actors who could be easily dismissed as brie-eating Hollywood elitists. Of course, the newspapers and TV networks could have easily interviewed academics and other more traditional anti-war sources, but they chose not to do so. In a speech in the fall of 2002, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy “laid out what was arguably the most comprehensive case yet offered to the public questioning the Bush administration's policy and timing on Iraq,” noted Michael Geler, the Washington Post's ombudsman. “The next day, the Post devoted one sentence to the speech. Ironically, Kennedy made ample use in his remarks of the public testimony in Senate Armed Services Committee hearings a week earlier by retired four-star Army and Marine Corps generals who cautioned about attacking Iraq at this time – hearings that the Post also did not cover. Last Saturday, antiwar rallies involving some 200,000 people in London and thousands more in Rome took place and nothing ran in the Sunday Post about them …. Whatever one thinks about the wisdom of a new war, once it starts it is too late to air arguments that should have been aired before.”2
Some peace groups attempted to purchase commercial time to broadcast ads for peace but were refused air time by all major networks and even MTV. (Some peace groups managed to partially circumvent the ban by buying local time for the ads in major cities.3) CBS network president Martin Franks explained the refusal by saying, “We think that informed discussion comes from our news programming.” MTV spokesman Graham James said, “We don't accept advocacy advertising because it really opens us up to accepting every point of view on every subject.”4 Whereas pundits from pro-war think tanks had ready access to talk shows where they sat in studios and expounded their views, it took mass protests of millions of people worldwide on February 15, 2003, before broadcasters gave more than cursory attention to the existence of a huge grassroots peace movement. Even then, coverage consisted of crowd shots and images of people waving banners, with little attempt to present the actual reasoning and arguments put forward by war opponents.
This does not mean that there was no diversity or no quality journalism in the United States. Actually, there was quite a bit of good investigative reporting, much of which we have drawn upon in writing this book. There were also a number of channels outside the mass media, such as web sites and email lists, through which alternative viewpoints were vigorously expressed. During the period following 9/11 and throughout the war in Iraq, however, the dominant tone and content of the American mass media was jingoistic and pro-war.
Gulf War II: The Sequel
Media coverage of the 2003 war in Iraq was a sequel, both in style and content, to the 1991 “CNN phenomenon” that occurred during the first U.S. war in the Persian Gulf. “For the first time in history, thanks to the shrewdness of Saddam Hussein, a television network became an active participant in the development of a major international crisis,” observed former journalism executive Claude Moisy in a 1995 study titled The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age. CNN “became the channel of communication between the warring parties and the instant chronicler of the conflict. The impact on the international community was such that the expression 'global live coverage' was widely accepted as the description of what had happened and as the definitive hallmark of CNN.”1
These trends continued and intensified with media coverage of the 2003 war in Iraq. “By a large margin, TV won in Iraq – even in areas that papers expected to win,” reported John Lavine, director of the Readership Institute, a research organization funded by newspapers to help them increase the number of people who read them.2 The Readership Institute conducted a study of media consumption patterns during the war and found that newspapers were being trounced by TV, which viewers regarded as more complete, accurate and engaging, offering the best experts and the greatest variety of viewpoints.1
Within the TV world, moreover, the cable networks dominated the traditional nightly news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC. A survey conducted by the Los Angeles Times found that nearly 70 percent of Americans were getting most of their information about the war from the all-news cable channels such as FOX, CNN and MSNBC. Only 18 percent relied on the traditional nightly news.2 Even MSNBC, whose market share was a distant third behind FOX and CNN, saw a 350 percent increase in viewership during the war.3 But it was FOX, with its mix of belligerent hyper-patriotism, that won the ratings war.4 And just as CNN's success in the first war shaped editorial policies throughout the broadcast world, the success of FOX triggered a ripple effect as other networks tailored their coverage to compete with what industry insiders called “the FOX effect.”5
In many ways, however, the rise of round-the-clock cable TV news phenomenon reflected a decline in the amount and quality of foreign news available to American audiences. As Moisy pointed out, CNN by 1995 had a news gathering network worldwide of only 20 bureaus, with 35 correspondents outside the United States – “only half of what the BBC has had for a long time to cover world events on radio and television” and
only a fraction of what the three largest international newswire services maintain on a permanent basis …. The Associated Press, a wire service in the United States … can carry up to a hundred foreign stories a day. By comparison, CNN (including CNN International) never brings more than twenty foreign stories a day to its viewers, if for no other reason than the much higher cost of producing and transmitting video news.6
With the exception of wars and national disasters, notes Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, “many news executives, particularly in television, concluded more than a decade ago that Americans had little interest in news beyond their borders.” The time devoted to foreign coverage on ABC, CBS and NBC fell from 4,032 minutes in 1989 to 1,382 in 2,000, rebounding
only slightly following the 9/11 attacks to 2,103 minutes in 2002. Once wars are over, countries fall quickly out of the spotlight. Afghanistan received 306 minutes of coverage while the war raged in November 2001, but within three months it fell to 28 minutes, and by March 2003 it was just one minute. Following the collapse of Saddam's regime, attention to Iraq went into rapid decline, as the cable and TV networks turned to covering the murder of pregnant California woman Laci Peterson and a miracle dog who survived being hit by a car.1
Round-the-clock live coverage also comes at the expense of detail, depth and research. It may be visually engaging and emotionally riveting, but viewers receive very little background analysis or historical context. While Operation Desert Storm was underway, a research team at the University of Massachusetts surveyed public opinion and correlated it with knowledge of basic facts about U.S. policy in the region. The results were startling: “The more TV people watched, the less they knew …. Despite months of coverage, most people do not know basic facts about the political situation in the Middle East, or about the recent history of U.S. policy towards Iraq.” Moreover, “our study revealed a strong correlation between knowledge and opposition to the war. The more people know, in other words, the less likely they were to support the war policy.” Not surprisingly, therefore, “people who generally watch a lot of television were substantially more likely to 'strongly' support the use of force against Iraq.”2
The same can undoubtedly be said even more strongly about Gulf War II and the viewers in 2003 who tuned in to watch FOX anchor Neil Cavuto berating a professor who had written an anti-war letter as an “obnoxious, pontificating jerk,” a “self-absorbed, condescending imbecile,” and an “Ivy League intellectual Lilliputian.”3 Viewers may have felt that the coverage on TV was better than the coverage in newspapers, but there was actually an inverse relationship between the amount of emotional entertainment on display and the amount of actual information that viewers received. “FOX does less news and more talking about the news than any other network,” noted Contra Costa Times TV critic Chuck Barney after reviewing more than 200 hours of war coverage from different channels.1 However, MSNBC was not far behind. In the excerpt below from an April 2 broadcast (edited here for brevity), note how little information is actually imparted as the program skips over the usual themes: Iraqi joy at being liberated, the evil nature of Saddam and his regime, the dangers of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, the heroism of our troops, and the iron resolve of President Bush:
ANNOUNCER: And these are the very latest headlines of the top of the hour from MSNBC's continuing coverage of “Operation IRAQI FREEDOM” ….
CHRIS MATTHEWS (host): In southern Iraq, residents are still wary of the coalition forces, but they are starting to warm up. Here is ITV's Bill Neely, who is with the British troops in Umm Qasr.
NEELY: Another night, another raid, and another crack is made in the repressive and brutal state that is Saddam's Iraq. The marines are targeting his henchmen in the south …. Saddam's secret police and paramilitaries are being rounded up. The old regime disappears, a new dawn, and some Iraqis are glad to see the last of them ….
MATTHEWS: Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia sits on the Armed Services Committee, and he is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Senator Chambliss, I'm going to ask you the bottom line: how's the war going?
CHAMBLISS: Chris, I think the war is going great. Our brave men and women are the best trained, best equipped, best prepared army in the world, and in only 13 days, we have moved further with greater speed than any army in the history of the world, and everybody knows what they've seen on TV with respect to the airpower that we're delivering to Baghdad and other surrounding communities. In Iraq, we're taking out the Republican Guard in a very surgical manner, and at the same time, not destroying civilian sites. We're not destroying a lot of the history of that country, and I think their folks are doing extremely well with a minimum of casualties ….
MATTHEWS: Was that the kind of war we should have expected though? A desperate regime, we are facing a desperate regime.
CHAMBLISS: That's right. When you've got a guy like Saddam, who is a murderer, a torturer and a rapist, you need to expect all of the worst from him, and now I think we do that, and our guys are prepared for whatever may be forthcoming ….
MATTHEWS: Have you got any information about whether they intend to use chemical [weapons]?
CHAMBLISS: I don't know. We know he has them. But whether or not he will use them now … we just don't know Chris, but it could come in any point in time.
MATTHEWS: Is it fair to assume that the Iraqi government has direct ties to the terrorist camp that's in northern Iraq?
STEVE EMERSON, MSNBC TERRORISM ANALYST: They have found some precursors in some type of chem-bio development there. They're not a hundred percent sure; they're shipping it back as we speak for a chemical laboratory analysis. But it looks like – The Commander on site, for example, said, there was a precursor to ricin, as it was found in London ….
MATTHEWS: Let me ask about the dangers of ricin. How does it affect people? Just give me a basic fear that we should have of that.
EMERSON: It can totally immobilize you, kill you within 36 hours, if not treated within the first few minutes or first hour or so.
MATTHEWS: Once again, great having your expertise. Thanks for joining us. Let's go right now to the White House and NBC's Campbell Brown. How is President Bush handling his role as wartime commander in chief?
BROWN: USA Today … described the President as carrying a burden, as being very tense, and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was quick to come out this morning and say he believed the story was too negative, that the President is a lot more steeled, a lot more confident than it made him out to be ….
MATTHEWS: Campbell, but the President in the middle of a war, with Americans getting killed, if he were bopping around the White House singing and whistling dippity doo da, wouldn't people think he was off his nut? Wouldn't you expect him to look a little turned off by what's going on?1
As in Gulf War I, the coverage of Gulf War II featured engaging visuals, some of which were familiar such as the green nightscope shots of Baghdad. Others were new, such as the live videophone images from embedded reporters of troops advancing through the desert. “The characters are the same: the President is a Bush and the other guy is Hussein. But the technology – the military's and the news media's – has exploded,” said MSNBC chief Erik Sorenson. He compared it to “the difference between Atari and PlayStation.” TV coverage, he said, “will be a much more three-dimensional visual experience, and in some cases you may see war live. This may be one time where the sequel is more compelling than the original.”2
In Doha, Qatar, the Pentagon built a $1.5 million press center, where Brigadier General Vincent Brooks delivered briefings surrounded by soft-blue plasma screens. Networks quickly scrambled to give names to their war coverage, with corresponding graphic logos that swooshed and gleamed in 3D colors accompanied by mood-inducing soundtracks. CBS chose “America at War.” CNN went with “Strike on Iraq.” CNBC was “The Price of War,” while NBC and MSNBC both went with “Target: Iraq” – a choice that changed quickly as MSNBC joined FOX in using the Pentagon's own code name for the war – “Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.” The logos featured fluttering American flags or motifs involving red, white and blue. On FOX, martial drumbeats accompanied regularly scheduled updates. Promo ads for MSNBC featured a photo montage of soldiers accompanied by a piano rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” All of the networks peppered their broadcasts with statements such as, “CNN's live coverage of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM will continue, right after this short break.” Every time this phrase came out of a reporter's mouth or appeared in the corner of the screen, the stations implicitly endorsed White House claims about the motives for war.
The networks also went to pains to identify with and praise the troops. FOX routinely referred to U.S. troops as “we” and “us
” and “our folks.” MSNBC featured a recurring segment called “America's Bravest,” featuring photographs of soldiers in the field. Regular features on FOX included “The Ultimate Sacrifice,” featuring mug shots of fallen U.S. soldiers, and “The Heart of War,” offering personal profiles of military personnel.
Much of the coverage looked like a primetime patriotism extravaganza, with inspiring theme music and emotional collages of war photos used liberally at transitions between live reporting and advertising breaks. Bombing raids appeared on the screen as big red fireballs, interspersed with “gun-cam” shots, animated maps, charts and whizzy graphics showcasing military maneuvers and weapons technology. Inside the studios, networks provided large, game-board floor maps where ex-generals walked around with pointers, moving around little blue and red jet fighters and tanks.
“Have we made war glamorous?” asked MSNBC anchor Lester Holt during a March 26 exchange with former Navy Seal and professional wrestler turned politician Jesse Ventura, whom it had hired as an expert commentator.
“It reminds me a lot of the Super Bowl,” Ventura replied.1
Overcoming the “Vietnam Syndrome”
During World Wars I and II, government censorship of military correspondents was routine, heavy, and rarely questioned even by the journalists themselves, who engaged in self-censorship and avoided graphic depictions of the gore and emotional trauma of war.2 This was mostly true also of the Korean war, although censorship was less frequent and journalists began to report on negative aspects of war that previously went unmentioned, such as casualty rates for specific units and morale problems among American soldiers.1 Vietnam was the first “television war” and also the first war in which serious differences emerged between the military and the reporters who covered it. After the war ended, in fact, many people concluded that television coverage undermined public support for the war by bringing disturbing scenes of death and violence into American living rooms.
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