James Q. Wilson on the patriot reporter
Hat tip realclearpolitics. Writing for City Journal, Wilson says:
Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40 percent of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.
When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51 percent of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77 percent were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89 percent were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94 percent were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.
Naturally, some of the hostile commentary reflects the nature of reporting. When every news outlet struggles to grab and hold an audience, no one should be surprised that this competition leads journalists to emphasize bloody events. To some degree, the press covers Iraq in much the same way that it covers America: it highlights conflict, shootings, bombings, hurricanes, tornadoes, and corruption.
But the war coverage does not reflect merely an interest in conflict. People who oppose the entire War on Terror run much of the national press, and they go to great lengths to make waging it difficult.
Soldier after soldier complains about the negative coverage, especially when returning from Iraq. I know I did.
Another important excerpt (extended):
Thankfully, though, the press did not cover World War II the way it has covered Vietnam and Iraq. What caused this profound change? Like many liberals and conservatives, I believe that our Vietnam experience created new media attitudes that have continued down to the present. During that war, some reporters began their coverage supportive of the struggle, but that view did not last long. Many people will recall the CBS television program, narrated by Morley Safer, about U.S. Marines using cigarette lighters to torch huts in Cam Ne in 1965. Many will remember the picture of a South Vietnamese officer shooting a captured Vietcong through the head. Hardly anyone can forget the My Lai story that ran for about a year after a journalist reported that American troops had killed many residents of that village.
Undoubtedly, similar events occurred in World War II, but the press didn’t cover them. In Vietnam, however, key reporters thought that the Cam Ne story was splendid. David Halberstam said that it “legitimized pessimistic reporting” and would show that “there was something terribly wrong going on out there.” The film, he wrote, shattered American “innocence” and raised questions about “who we were.”
The changes came to a head in January 1968, when Communist forces during the Tet holiday launched a major attack on South Vietnamese cities. According to virtually every competent observer, these forces met a sharp defeat, but American press accounts described Tet instead as a major Communist victory. Washington Post reporter Peter Braestrup later published a book in which he explained the failure of the press to report the Tet offensive accurately. His summary: “Rarely has contemporary crisis-journalism turned out, in retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality.”
Even as the facts became clearer, the press did not correct its false report that the North Vietnamese had won. When NBC News producer Robert Northshield was asked at the end of 1968 whether the network should put on a news show indicating that American and South Vietnamese troops had won, he rejected the idea, because Tet was already “established in the public’s mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat.”
I heard someone on NBC (quoted on radio news) demand that Rupert Murdoch and Fox be held accountable for even considering running O.J. Simpson’s “what if I did it” story. I think Simpson’s should be behind bars and Fox should never have considered a deal with Simpson. But the NBC commentator doesn’t know her netowrk’s history regarding a far larger reportorial error.
Read Mr. Wilson’s entire essay.
I went to Vietnam in the summer of 1970 and visited for about a year. Although I volunteered and considered it my duty, I had already decided that US involvement in the war was wrong. When I arrived, it soon became clear that most of the sailors, marines and grunts I met either felt the same way or had given up the idea of the possibility of victory. This was especially true of black American servicemen I knew. Even low and mid-level officers I knew had no illusions about the futility of our action there, and some were vocal in their negativity. By the time I got home, I was amazed at the extent to which we had been abandonded by America. Was victory possible? Absolutely. But Criminally bad leadership in Washington (morons directing bombing mission flight paths from situation rooms in DC) who had already decided to sell out their corrupt partnes in Saigon were no match for the growing media frenzy to “discover” bad news in Vietnam. When I first heard about John Kerry while serving in Saigon in early 1971, there was a lot of buzz about all his medals. He was a pretty big here for the Navy especially in the Riverene Forces. I soon found myself in the Riverene forces and in the space of a month or so John Kerry had parlayed his hero celebrity into his lie filled campaign against the war based on made up American atrocities. When I got down to the Ca Mau penninsula early that summer, I heard the stories form people who had served with him and even more second hand stories about what a poser he had been, faked his injuries and in typical OIC fashion had written up his own medal citations. But the media had jumped all over his story and now every story coming out of vietnam was negative, and we were all baby killers. Even the SEALS I knew didn’t have atrocity stories to tell. And they love to talk about what bad guys they are. I never saw any myself and the only stories I ever heard were a couple of 2nd and 3rd hand tales that sounded like typical news report of the time. I’m sure they happened, but I absolutely do not believe they were at all common. I did hear first hand stories about our ARVN allies. Boy, did they have different values. A couple of years later, I was in college, debating the value of our presence and the honor of our actions with my fellow students. Most were flabergasted that I would and could defend any aspect of that war. One of the things that most offended me was the ethic presented in a journalism class that urged students to go out and find stories that supported their views on world events and social values. Anti-war reporting in vietnam and anti-republican reporting of the Watergate story were presented as the model. We were being taught to make the news to support the desired story. Journalism now very often consists of an assignment given with a forgone conclusion. The reporter’s job? Go get stories, details, facts, names and faces that support the desired outcome. Where I come from that’s called propaganda. Remember the stories from the embedded media that were about the troops and how scary and difficult things were? The reporters were living the same war the grunts and troopers were. As soon as things began to wind down and the embeds went home or back to Kuwait or wherever, the stories began to take on the color of the coverage wanted back in the world. War is bad, American servicemen are animals, the policy is a failure, we can’t beat the “insurgents” because they beleive in what they’re doing. They’re rightously just trying to drive out the evil white man invader crusader. We didn’t lose the Vietnam war, but we left before the South could win. That decision was forced on a government eager to escape hard realities by a disillusioned, war weary public, fueled by an endless deluge of negative defeatist stories from a largely anti-war media. The same thing could happen again. Thank God George Bush is not Nixon or Johnson. Millions died in Southeast Asia (Laos, Cambodia & South Vietnam) in the 70’s because of our loss of resolve. Millions of honorable American Servicemen were slandered and traumatized and 50,000 American heros were dishonored when their service and sacrifices were cast into the trash bin by the anti-war left and ignored by a spineless public. I can’t adequately express my anger at the thought of the same thing happening again.
Comment by Scott Sterling — 11/21/2006 @ 5:30 pm
Well said, Scott! Expressed many of my views very well.
Comment by AF Dad — 11/21/2006 @ 6:04 pm
I have a little theory about WWII, which is that it was essentially an anomaly in American history in the modern communications era. Prior to 1941, the sentiment of the nation was largely isolationist and anti war among all segments of society. That changed months before Pearl Harbor, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Suddenly, the labor movement, the intellectuals, the college professors etc were all fired up to go fight Hitler. Pearl Harbor was a cassus belli to go attack … Germany! Woody Guthrie started running around with a sign on his guitar that said “this machine kills fascists”. Once Hitler was dispatched, the left had as it prime agenda to put the genie of American power back in the bottle, ASAP. After 50 years of tearing at the fabric of our society, I think the left can declare victory. Mission Accomplished! Unless the left supports a war, we will never have the unanimity of spirit and will to achieve victory that we had in WWII. In the instance of OIF, they were cowed into supporting it from fear of political repercussions, and now that the political tide has turned, they are free to work for our defeat and humiliation.
Comment by Sean McNeill — 11/21/2006 @ 9:33 pm
My father was a WWII vet. Years ago I was very upset about the my lai incident. My father looked at me with a soldier’s eyes and said if I thought these awful things had not occurred in WWII, actually in all wars, then I was a fool. Looking at our world, their are aberrations of extreme cruelty and evil, but the norm, I believe, is to do good. My father’s generation fought the war (and the civilians at home, for the most part, fought the war here) to preserve our country, and, today, MY soldiers fight for MY country. I’m not sure what the rest of this country at home is fighting.
Comment by Judith — 11/22/2006 @ 7:02 am
I spent 15-years as a television news producer in the 80s and 90s. I had not attended journalism school - my background was in music and law. I was amazed at what reporters schooled in journalism considered stories, and what they considered a proper point of view. I found they generally looked to Edward R. Murrow’s “Harvest of Shame” report for their inspiration. It was his 1960 look at migrant workers in the United States - and it was completely a look at the negative. Murrow received awards for the report, and he was feted in liberal society. It is still sold on DVD by PBS and is cited frequently as journalistic excellence. Almost all of the reporters I worked with wanted to create another “Harvest of Shame.” Watch your local TV news over this Thanksgiving weekend and see how may stories you see on homeless people - those stories are all Murrow’s legacy. I think that the down-with-America mentality of Harvest transferred to war reporting during Vietnam - particularly with CBS reporters. And the mentality has remained in reporting since. I agree with the above comments. The war in Vietnam was fought as an effort not to win. Many Americans voted for Nixon in 1968 because they thought his plan to end the war was one to secure victory. But by 1970 (when I, too, entered the Army) folks had figured out that we had no intention of winning the war. What the left had begun as an anti-draft movement became an anti-war movement with across the board support. That gave the media the idea that it could control public opinion with shameful stories.
Comment by Juan Paxety — 11/22/2006 @ 7:37 am
The last straw for me was CNN’s airing the disgusting video of insugent snipers taking shots at and killing Americans. As far as I am concerned, they are part of the enemy.
Comment by Rich — 11/22/2006 @ 5:04 pm
I question the validity of “most people”. This comment comes as a result of polls taken at the time. The same groups who take polls now. With the benefit of history we now discover that the great protests against the war seen on TV and in the cinema newsreels were misleading because the marches supporting the US and the Vietnam war were much greater. So, in reality, we have exactly the same problem we had in the late 60s and early 70s. Only now there is some semblance of kickback because of the alternate media. Alternate media will not be enough to combat the negative flowing in from the MSM, slanted polls, and politicians of all stripes who just want to kill Bush or get on television. Talk is cheap. A massive campaign is needed to combat the enormous advantage the enemy, and they are enemy, has in terms of people and resources available to attack the US position in Iraq and around the world. Pamphlets, posters, talkers, marchers, we need to take to the streets to show support for the US position.
Comment by davod — 11/23/2006 @ 5:35 am
Scott S., thanks for a great note. While it agrees with me, I must add that the US gov’t Generals under Johnson AND Nixon were, consistently, “lying” about what it would take to “win.” We were fighting a Limited War, not a Total War. Limited Wars are not ended by any decision of the winners, but by the losers deciding to stop fighting — even though they could keep fighting. The USA is too full of Control Freaks. If we can’t control when we win, that means we can’t win, so that means we shouldn’t even fight. In Vietnam, Nixon’s silly Paris Peace Accords got the US to vacate, to run away. (Perhaps thinking he could confuse the commies if he ran away some more?) There should have been some “tripwire” 20 000 or more US troops in the North, to leave only after the S & N agree on a peaceful future, or peaceful division. The 1974 Dem Party landslide allowed the disgusting 1975 CUT IN FUNDING for our S. Viet allies, letting the murderous N. Viet commies know we wouldn’t do squat if they totally violated the Paris Peace, so they did. Yeah, our corrupt, incompetent, and cowardly S. Viet allies collapsed faster than ‘we’ thought possible. Corruption in young democracies (old ones too?) has NOT been adequately discussed and focused on. Corruption in Iraq is one of the reasons so few folk are willing to die for the current Iraqi gov’t. [The US should immediately implement full internet transparency for all economic reconstruction and gov’t grants, and push the Iraqi gov’t to do so, as well.] The constant negative press needs to be addressed by Pres. Bush. I suggest he start making jokes about how they support the terrorists, that the NYT is an ally of those who murder American soldiers, and laugh at their self-censorship about covering their own bias. I’d even like to see a soldiers widow’s group sue the NYT and WaPo for illegally aiding the terrorists (in publishing the US secrets), for some $10 mil/ per US casualty in which “a preponderance of evidence” shows that the NYT was guilty of aiding them. Let a jury decide! Scott, I’m angry too. Don’t you want to start a group of folks who protest and boycott the companies that advertize in and support the NYT?
Comment by Tom Grey - Liberty Dad — 11/23/2006 @ 6:31 am
[…] Spot On Austin Bay has a great post on the overly negative reporting of the Iraq war. Here’s the key ‘graph Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40 percent of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts. […]
Pingback by Thinking Right » Blog Archive » Spot On — 11/23/2006 @ 12:47 pm
First of all the Center for Media and Public Affairs is a conservative media research group staffed, founded and funded by conservatives which makes a habit of finding liberal bias in everything from the media to universities to PBS. This is what they do and who they are so for me to take their word on what makes a story “negative” is hard do swallow. They probably think that any story about U.S. casualities or tactical setbacks are negative. The media in my view was painting the picture that the Bush administration wanted them to paint. Stories about what a threat Saddam was to us and how we would be greated as liberators with flowers and kisses is more close to what the so called liberal media was pushing. The good news reporting continued as the U.S. quickly defeated the Iraqi army. Then reality started to peak it’s ugly head into the pretty picture being painted for us. The looting started and I imagine our “liberal” media felt some compulsion to report on that even if it would later be portrayed as “negative” anti-war on terror sentiment by conservatives. After all many of the weapons stolen right after the war, while U.S. troops were being sent to protect the oil and disband the Iraqi army, are currently killing Americans, but we can’t report that or we are called pro-terrorist. Then we had a little psy-ops for the American public with the fall of Saddam’s statue. The “liberal anti-war media” made it look as if huge crowds were gathered to topple the statue and cheer the “liberation”. The part of the footage never shown on the MSM was when the camera zoomed out and it was seen that there was about a hundred and some people and the part of the story never reported by the “lib………aw screw it, I’ll call it what it is, the corporate cowardly right wing boot licking media, futher to be referred to as the MSM. Well the MSM never told us that little scene was set up by U.S. military with the help of the psy-ops people. Then we had some little itty bitty setbacks in Iraq that of course would only be pointed out and reported on by people who had a down-with-America mentality. Thing like hundreds of thousands of missing assault rifles, unprotected sites where the WMD supposedly were, rising sectarian violence that continues to escalate, death squads, American abuses by killing and torturing innocent Iraqis, no WMD’s found except in Santorums and Hoekstrums fevered little brains, rising influence of Iran in Iraq, theft and corruption by contractors with our tax money, more missing weapons, poorly equipped American soldiers and on and on as well as a couple thousand dead Americans. And all through this your guys only concern is that the media has been too negative. I guess you want more stories about schools being painted and hospitals being built. Thats fine. It has been reported. I see it all the time. You even have you own channel, Fox, which tried to push that angle till reality kept intruding. But at a time when you have Americans being killed almost every day, more Iraqis killed every two months than people were killed on 9/11, and al Qaeda streaming into Iraq to kill more Americans it would be unethical, unprofessional and insane for the media to be presenting the rosy picture many conservatives feel is being denied to them. Not saying the media does not try, in an effort to please the right, like ABCs Mark Halperin has promised to do, and the administration, but after three years of being lied to and propagandized to fear the terrorist, enough Americans are starting to demand a little truth in advertising.
Comment by Paul — 11/23/2006 @ 8:48 pm
This site has become a complete joke, blaming everyone but those who bear the responsibility for the debacle that is Iraq.
Comment by Mark Zimmerman — 11/23/2006 @ 9:36 pm
The request of a small indulgence, Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright, The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light, And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville, mighty Casey has struck out.
Comment by Bill Gross — 11/24/2006 @ 2:38 pm
I have spent many hours today researching conservative or pro-Iraq blogs and 98% of them return to the subject of VietNam.The narrative is remarkably similar, almost word for word there are the standard anti-Kerry comments, anti-press comments, anti-left comments.Striking in their lack of originality, in the repetitive nature of the meme.If only…We could have..the traitors…I realize your reality and your very sanity are wrapped up in the necessity of the truth of this narrative. To admit you were chumped can never happen.It would be worse than staring at that black wall on the Mall.
Comment by troutsky — 11/25/2006 @ 4:25 pm
Austin, Your blog must be rattling some feathers in the madhouse, nutjob portion of the loony left! First we get Paul, who, if I can figure out his disjoint rambling, thinks that the who campaign in Iraq was designed to fool the dumb, hopelessly ignorant American people into ignoring our real objectives in the Middle East and doing it all with the help if the right wing MSM! Second, we get some nutter named Mark who seems to not have read anything that Mr. Wilson said in his excellent article, but who thinks that Wilson and those of us who have commented here are “…blaming everyone except those who are responsible for the debacle that is Iraq.” Anyone who could disagree with Scott Sterling’s and Liberty Dad’s analysis of the role the media has played in the lack of support for our efforts in Iraq needs to get off the Daily Kos website and out of the backrooms of Howard Dean’s office and smell the roses, Marky baby! And finally, we get Troutsky (an apt name) who caps the whole argument against us wrong-thinkers by saying we are receiving marching orders from a >> who is telling us all what to think and say. When the murderous bastards killed 3000 of us in 2001 and several thousand more innocents since (much less the thousands in Iraq) why didn’t they get some morons like this instead of hardworking or dedicated or fun loving real people? Tain’t fair, somehow.
Comment by AF Dad — 11/25/2006 @ 10:08 pm
(insert the words “higher power” after the carets above.)
Comment by AF Dad — 11/25/2006 @ 10:12 pm
AF Dad is assured his right thinking derives from analysis of “good” information while I (and all others in opposition)are the brainwashed ones.A bit of a stalemate.I was just pointing out what Ive observed and freely admit those on the left adopt the same type of repetitive narrative.Do you disagree that consent can be manufactured? Does propaganda work? Does advertising ,for that matter? Now analyze the motives. Does the NYT,the MSM, have a vested interest in the rise of “Islamofascism”? Or might a corporate media (think General Electric) have any interest in promoting the necessity of conflict? Would energy be a concern? Hardworking,dedicated, funloving? Strange categories to exclude me from but whatever.I don’t consider anyone here a looney, nutjob,madhouse, moron nor am I talking about a “higher power”. Think of the filters through which you distill information.
Comment by troutsky — 11/26/2006 @ 10:22 am
AF Dad, I check this site regularly to see if the Right is coming to grips with its failure in Iraq. Obviously, that’s not happening. Blaming liberals will not work for the Right.
Comment by Mark Zimmerman — 11/26/2006 @ 12:14 pm
troutsky, So do I understand you to say that the whole mess in Iraq is just the Capitalist Bosses using it as an opportunity to make money at the hands of the down trodden masses?
Comment by Bill Gross — 11/26/2006 @ 1:28 pm
Any freshman J-major can tell you that a story is “negative” if the number of words which carry a negative feeling/emotion/connotation outnumber those that carry a positive charge. The word list is well-known in newsrooms and J-schools. It isn’t a matter of right or left, though the advocacy journalism out there tends to trend to the sinister. Just count up the words in each category, and there you are. Anyone can do it. Even some of the people who have posted here.
Comment by Anita — 11/26/2006 @ 10:55 pm
My, Austin, but the moonbats do seem to be out. The brutal fact of the matter is that the MSM is a combination of leftist ideological bias and laziness. They, being the big three networks, CNN, the NY Times, Wash Post, etc., seem to regard the Bush Administration, not al Qaeda and various Iraqi extremists, as the enemy. This was beautifully illustrated by CNN airing of the disgusting footage of enemy snipers, and the NY Times’ reckless exposure of surveillance programs used against terrorist suspects. Indeed, Ted Turner recently said he did not know who to root for in the War on Terror, an attitude illustrated last year by Michael Duffy of Time, when he told a C-Span caller that as a journalist, he could not take sides. It is interesting to note that the media continues to venerate Edward Murrow and Ernie Pyle, when by their own standards today, Murrow and Pyle (both of whom knew who the bad guys were in World War II) would be considered mere propagandists, not “journalists.” The laziness comes in because when you see a report from some MSM talking head in Baghdad, he or she is usually talking from a balconey, accompanied sometimes by the standard footage. The simple fact is that they are simply repeating what has been brought to them by Iraqi stringers, any number of whom may be working for various insurgent groups. We have seen the LA Times recently caught by reporting as fact a cooked up propaganda story about civilians being killed in an air strike (HT Patterico). Today AP reported six sunnis being burned alive, except now no one can verify the identity of the Iraqi “police spokesman” who reported this, or its veracity. It is already out there, however, as “news.” The recent Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon repeatedly showed the MSM being used as either willing tools or useful idiots for the Hezbos, as CNN’s Nic Robertson showed in a rare moment of candor, when he said that during his “report” from a bombed out Beirut neighborhood was entirely stage managed by the Hezbos. As I said in an earlier post, the MSM has become part of the enemy. That, perhaps is what happens when you check your citizenship at the office door.
Comment by Rich — 11/27/2006 @ 3:47 pm