TV Networks Cover Iraq War Through Local Lenses by Sanjay Talwani No military action is complete without a battle to explain it to the world, and in their coverage of the Iraq war, television news networks across the globe saw their own work come under the microscope. Competing organizations in the United States and abroad reached new heights of coverage and exposure even as they endured new levels of public scrutiny and feedback. As news organizations wrap up one act of the Iraq story and begin another, most say theyíre proud of their recent performance in the Middle East. Yet a trans-Atlantic rhetorical fight continues. Journalists bristle at charges of bias, but the national and cultural lenses through which they report belie the gulfs of opinion on the Iraq war. ìWas it pro-American?î asked Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Stephen Hess of the U.S. coverage. ìSure. Was Al-Jazeera pro-Arab? Sure,î he added. ìIf youíre covering a sports team for The Washington Post, youíre rooting for the home team.î Hess was partially joking, but nearly all U.S. media have come under some attack from the head of the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC), columnists, thin k tanks, leftists and others for rooting for the home team a little too lustily. That cheerleading contributed to Americansí support of the war, not the other way around, said Steve Rendall of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), who cited a study that showed pro-war sources were grossly favored on the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS and Fox. Rendall claimed that 71 percent of the sources on these programs could be identified as pro-war, with only 2.6 percent identifiably antiwar at a time when a major nationwide poll found that anti-war sentiment had grown to 27 percent of the U.S. populationóa tenfold difference. In addition, anti-war sources tended to be Iraqi, French or German government officials, and their interviews came in the form of short sound bites from the street, while the pro-war sources got sit-down interviews inside the studio. Rendall said his favorite major news source, the BBC, does it differently. ìTheir attitude toward official power Ö is a far more adversarial one,î he said. ìIn the U.S., weíre not used to journalists getting in the face of officials.î He has harsh criticism for various specific stories, such as the coverage of Secretary of State Colin Powellís Feb. 5 speech to the United Nations on banned Iraqi weapons. ìInstead of seeing some journalistic skepticism in the coverage of Powell, what we saw was an epidemic of journalistic credulity,î Rendall said. ìWhat we saw were gushing reports. Itís not a journalistís job just to act as stenographer for some powerful public official. The point is, governments always lie. Reporters should know this.î Hess, however, defended the Americans, saying it is the BBC thatís guilty of a recent leftward tilt. ìIn general, American journalism is much more fact-oriented,î he said. ìI did feel that the BBC tended to have a political point of view Ö and I was surprised by that. Particularly, the anchors have moved farther and farther to the left.î BBCís viewership and visits to its Web sites skyrocketed during the Iraqi conflict. ìBBC was a natural outlet for people who opposed the Bush policies to begin with,î Hess said. Rendall agreed that news sources abroad tend to be pointedly ideological, but to him, the claim of objectivity is part of the American mediaís problem. ìOne reason why debate is in such short supply in the U.S. is because most of our [prestigious] media outlets claim to be objective and down the middle,î Rendall said. ìSo they donít like to get into scrapesÖ. Itís only in the U.S. that we have the pretense that weíre media scientists who simply have this long pair of tweezers and weíre holding up factoids to the light and somehow objectively determining reality.î The British practice of hectoring sources in some cases serves the public better, Rendall noted. ìThey were more dubious of the war because they actually heard more information that challenged the official Blair government version,î he said. Hess takes a less sinister view of some of the American mediaís distinguishing traits. ìAmericans were faulted for not showing enough bloodshed, as if that was done for purely political reasons,î he said, adding that Americans donít show gore in traffic accidents either and were restrained about graphic footage of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Journalists serving foreign audiences gained worldwide exposure thanks to the Internet and the sharing of news feeds, plus the unprecedented access that reporters gained when they were embedded with U.S. military troops. As a result, some hesitate to officially denounce their American counterparts, explaining that their audiences simply want different coverage different than the Americans. CNN International, which includes multiple channels and is prominent nearly everywhere in the world, ìdoesnít broadcast American views or American viewpoints to the rest of the world, because that would be pretty stupid,î said spokesman Nigel Pritchard. CNN International reaches about 160 million subscriber households outside the United States and is available on some cable systems and at night on the CNN financial news channel. ìThereís no point in us broadcasting the Pentagon briefings in full. Why would we?î Pritchard said. ìWe would carry the Iraqi ones, or we would carry the Blair ones, or the Australian press briefings Ö because we have an international audience.î BBC spokeswoman Amy Mulcair said BBC, funded by the license fees of its viewers, remains independent of pressure from advertisers or the British government. ìHow weíre financed gives us that great independence and impartiality, which is something weíre terribly proud of, and we believe that shows through in our coverage,î she said. ìThose kinds of traits are what mark BBC out from commercial broadcasters.î The BBC family of news sources includes BBC World Report and a government-funded news service analogous to Voice of America. Each has extraordinary worldwide reach including, as the BBC claims, 80 percent of the radio listeners in Kabul, Afghanistan, although itís not clear what other options exist there. ìAnd I suppose the conflict is a good time to look and see, are we being as impartial as we possibly can? Given that there are several sides to every story and given the time of conflicts, itís sometimes hard to find out exactly what is the truth,î Mulcair said. Trans-Atlantic competition flared up on April 24 when BBC Director-General Greg Dyke said in a speech that it was ìvitalî that his nationís journalists ìdonít follow the path of many American networksî in going soft on politicians. Canadian-born media mogul Conrad Black later fought back, criticizing BBC programs for ìperverse and propagandisticî skewing of U.S. policy. But as CNNís coverage of the 1991 Persian Gulf War boosted it to a pinnacle of credibility and coverage, the 2003 Iraq war, with its real-time reporting and hundreds of embedded reporters, resulted in a flood of competing media outlets that were able to get their correspondents to cover the region. Thus, Al-Jazeera rose from a Middle East fixture to a household name worldwide. Even as the Qatar-based network took heat for showing prisoners of war and videotapes of Osama bin Laden, it had a presence on the ground that was tough for the Western networks to match, and its footage ended up being shown on numerous other networks. Al-Jazeera reaches about 35 million viewers in the Middle East, according to spokesman Jihad Ballout. At the start of the war, the network also had 4 million subscribing households in Europe. Within six days of the outbreak of war, that figure jumped to 8 million. The network emerged as part of the ìreal competition and challenge to the hegemony of Western media,î Ballout said. It also suffered the death of a correspondent when U.S. troops fired on the Palestine Hotel, where many journalists were staying. (U.S. military officials have said they were fired upon.) ìMorale was at an all-time low,î Ballout said. ìIn the heat of the moment there was talk that we should abandon coverage of the war altogether.î But Al-Jazeera stayed on and continues to consider Iraq one of its leading news stories. Coverage of one of the warís most memorable moments, the toppling of the statute of Saddam Hussein, is a window into the networksí different points of views. American networks showed it again and again, stressing the cheering crowd. CNN International used a split screen for much of the event, giving attention simultaneously to the arrival of civilian casualties at a Baghdad hospital. Al-Jazeera showed the event but did not portray it as a major turning point. ìWe certainly did not give it the aura of celebration because we thought the war was not going to be condensed into that moment in history,î Ballout said, adding that the network is prominently continuing its coverage of the country, including Americaís ìrenegingî on its promise to deliver democracy and stability to Iraq. ìThis to us is news,î said Ballout. ìThis is yet a major story. Iím not sure American media [are] highlighting that.î For Al-Jazeera, Iraq is close to home, and the network prides itself as a world media player that is also part of the social fabric of the Middle East. ìIraq will remain a story forever and ever,î Ballout said. Sanjay Talwani is a freelance writer in Alexandria, Va.