Facts in the line of fire

Reporters embedded with the invading forces inevitably sanitised images of the Iraq war, but why did all the TV coverage have a pro-war bias?

Shortly after President Bush declared victory in the war with Iraq, the BBC commissioned us to undertake a comprehensive study of the media’s war coverage. We spoke to dozens of journalists and news heads, from the main British broadcasters to key personnel at the Ministry of Defence and the Pentagon, and travelled to Qatar to talk to al-Jazeera. We’ve compared coverage with the US networks and al-Jazeera — and conducted surveys and focus groups to get the viewers’ perspectives. As we sifted through the evidence, it became clear that various claims about the war coverage do not hold up to scrutiny. We found no evidence that embedded reporters — who dominated the coverage — were necessarily “in bed” with the military, or the US or British governments. Most of the journalists involved made efforts to protect their objectivity and, on key issues, were demonstrably able to do so.

Embeds also revealed, on many occasions, how unreliable the information from military briefings can be. And they were often able to correct misleading claims made by military sources. But that doesn’t mean the widespread use of embeds is something to be celebrated. First, they were not able, on British television, to show the ugly side of war, and avoided images they knew would be too graphic or violent. This meant they could not help but provide a sanitised version. As a result, many viewers felt that the front-line footage provided by embeds was like watching a “war film” — full of action, but without the grisly consequences. Indeed, many viewers told us they wanted less of this kind of coverage, and more time looking at the wider issues — especially the attitudes of the Iraqi people themselves. Second, both reporters and viewers strongly support independent reporting, and want a multiplicity of voices heard during war. Following the death of many independent reporters — a number killed by US forces — there are fears among journalists that US military strategy will make embedding the only safe option. This is a fear that interviews with the Pentagon — which makes it clear that the battlefield is no place for unauthorised reporters — suggest is justified.

Third, as the embedded reporters themselves stressed, they are giving only one side of the story. The Pentagon, in particular, was happy to have them there because they would show US-led forces winning the war. If this kind of “action footage” dominates the coverage, it forces wider issues to the margins, reducing the war to a simple narrative of “us” vs “them.” Thus it may be that embedded reporters are, despite often diligent objectivity, forced by current constraints to produce a kind of coverage that may, for some, make war appear more acceptable. British broadcasters were not guilty of the overt bias found on US TV networks. NBC, for example, titled its coverage “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and unlike British broadcasters, the US networks pulled their correspondents from Baghdad, and made liberal use of words like “we” and “us” to refer to US-led forces. However, on certain key issues, British broadcasters did tend to assume that what they had been told by the government was true. So, for example, nine out of every ten references to weapons of mass destruction during the war suggested that Iraq probably possessed them, and only one in ten questioned this assumption. This suggests that “spin” from the British and US governments was successful in framing the coverage, while the doubters were less heeded. Broadcasters were also twice as likely to portray Iraqis as enthusiastically embracing the invasion, rather than as suspicious or hostile. This was despite mixed and evenly balanced reports about Iraqi reaction from both embeds and reporters in Baghdad. News anchors, by contrast, were seven times more likely to refer to jubilant rather than disgruntled Iraqis. In other words, Iraqis were much more likely to make the headlines if they supported the invasion.

And while the BBC’s “anti-war bias” has become an article of faith for many, we found no evidence of this. Indeed, like most other broadcasters, the BBC generally leaned towards pro-war assumptions. The least pro-war broadcaster was Channel 4. We also found that while broadcasters have a healthy scepticism of information coming from military sources, in practice this is often overlooked. Claims from such sources were often given more credence than they warranted. We looked in detail at four stories that turned out be unfounded — the Scud attack on Kuwait, the Basra uprising, the Basra tank column and the fall of Umm Qasr — and found that only about one in ten references to these stories questioned the claims being made.
While broadcasters stress the importance of always attributing claims to a source, this often got lost in the abbreviated language of broadcast journalism. The problem here is clear: unfounded claims from military sources often end up being reported as fact. During the war, rolling 24-hour news services were often blamed for the spread of unfounded claims. In fact, their record is no worse than the conventional bulletins — BBC News 24 had one of the best records on attribution, while Sky was comparable to ITV news. Radio had a better record on attribution than TV — especially, Radio 4’s Today show. Something for Lord Hutton to consider, perhaps.
• The report was prepared by a research team at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, headed by Professor Justin Lewis, Professor Terry Threadgold, Dr Rod Brookes and Nick Mosdell.