NEWS MEDIA AS CREATING A PERCEIVED REALITY

NEWS MEDIA AS CREATING A PERCEIVED REALITY

The term media suggests that mass communication mediates between the audience and some objective reality that actually exists somewhere out there in the world. In Western culture, at least, we assume that such an external reality exists. More than with any other domain of media content, people tend to assume that news conveys objective reality to us in a clear and unbiased form. However, news writers and producers communicate their interpretation of that world reality through both their choice of topics and the amount of coverage they give (agenda setting). News is a “frame that delineates a world” (G.Tuchman, 1978).

TV is a storytelling medium. It abhors ambiguities, ragged edges, and unresolved issues. The effect all too frequently is to impose upon an event or situation a preconceived form that alters reality, heightening one aspect at the expense of another for the sake of a more compelling story, blocking out complications that get in the way of the narrative. (Abel, 1984, p. 68)

Although choices of media coverage are usually motivated from a sincere desire to present news stories to the public in the most complete and accurate way possible, there are occasional instances when the construction of reality goes beyond the bounds of what most would consider acceptable (see Box 7.5).

BOX 7.5

NEWS REPORTER OR NEWSMAKER? In their desire to make “an invisible truth visible, dramatic, and

entertaining” (Bogart, 1980, p. 235), media occasionally go too far. In 1966, CBS helped to finance an armed invasion of Haiti in exchange for exclusive TV rights of the event; the invasion was aborted by U.S. Customs. The next year a U.S. soldier cut off the ear of a dead Vietcong soldier; it later came out in his court martial that he did so after being offered a knife on a dare by a TV news cameraman (Lewy, 1978). There were numerous accounts of TV news crews in the 1960s arranging for protest demonstrations or drug parties to be staged again for the cameras if the original event was not caught on camera. Janet Cooke lost her Pulitzer Prize in 1981 after admitting that her article, “Jimmy’s World”

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contributed to the composite Jimmy. NBC faked a crash test in 1993 to show that a car it believed to be dangerous would explode. In 1998, Stephen Glass, writer for the New Republic and other magazines, was found to have fabricated all or parts of dozens of investigative journalism articles, even including a totally fictitious story about a cult that worshiped George Bush, Sr. (Lacayo, 2003). Writer Jayson Blair and two editors lost their jobs at the New York Times in 2003 after numerous articles of Blair’s turned out to be fabricated or plagiarized from other sources.

At other times, news journalists may become newsmakers in more positive ways. For example, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic trip to Israel in 1977 was arranged not by the United Nations or U.S. State Department diplomats, but by CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite. It was Cronkite who persistently called Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to arrange their eventual meeting (Weymouth, 1981).

Manipulation of News

Aside from the constraints of being newsworthy, sometimes other forces inside and outside of government impinge on journalists in ways that affect the reality of the news they create.

Direct Censorship. In countries with prior censorship, material must be submitted to government or military censors for advance approval before being aired, or the government owns and controls all news media.

In such cases, a very selective piece of reality may be offered, so much so that history may be substantially rewritten. For example, Russian citizens’ views of the West were for many years very heavily colored by news stories about American crime, racism, homelessness, and imperialism that appeared in the Soviet press. Even if very little in these stories was actually untrue, one’s overall perception was grossly distorted if, for example, crime was believed to be the rule rather than the exception.

Direct censorship can come in other ways. Azerbaijan’s government owns the printing company all newspapers must use; it refuses to print those it doesn’t like. Malaysia and Singapore have laws forbidding discussion of topics that may become divisive (religion, inter-ethnic violence or anything that might make the government look bad). Belarus evicted the newspaper Pahonya from its offices and moved it to a building with no water or sewage service. Later, the tax auditors levied a large fine against the paper (Martz, 1998).

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Intimidation. Sometimes journalists are bullied by forces which may or may not be connected to any government. For example, when the editor of Tijuana’s newspaper Zeta wrote against the local drug cartel, he was visited by a team of assassins. Although he survived and continued to write, not everyone would have had the courage to do so. When Zairean freelance writer Jean Mbenga Muaganvita wrote a series of articles on then-strongman President Mobutu Sese Seko, he was arrested and held incommunicado, and soldiers raped his 14-year-old daughter when they searched his home (Martz, 1998). Noted Colombian investigative journalist Fabio Castillo was fired by Bogotá’s El Espectador after implicating a government minister in a bank corruption scandal. Although the paper claims he was let go purely for financial reasons, the fact that the minister under suspicion mysteriously received an advance copy of the article before publication suggests otherwise (Rosenberg, 2003). Many journalists have been killed in recent years in Algeria, Mexico, Colombia, India, Cambodia, and other places.

Blocking Access. Certain news stories may be effectively censored purely through blocking the access of the media to the scene of the story. For example, during the apartheid era in South Africa, journalists were often forbidden to enter the black townships. Similar policies by the Israeli government have sometimes kept the press out of the West Bank during times of Palestinian unrest. In both cases, the governments involved clearly hoped that public attention to the problem would wane if compelling images could no longer be obtained for publication or broadcast.

Probably the clearest and most controversial examples of blocking press access have come in the coverage of recent regional wars. Working on the conventional (although dubious) wisdom that unrestricted press coverage lost the Vietnam War for the United States, Britain in 1982 and the United States in 1983 forbade the press from accompanying troops in the island wars in the Falklands/Malvinas and Grenada, respectively (Strobel, 1997). The same policy was followed by the United States in the 1989 invasion of Panama to oust dictator Manuel Noriega. Only much later did the public learn that casualties were far higher than originally reported, including the nearly total destruction of a large poor neighborhood in Panama City. The most widespread case of censorship through blocking access was exercised by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and their coalition allies in the six-week Persian Gulf War against Iraq in 1991. Coverage of this war is examined in more depth as a case study later in the chapter.

Indirect Censorship. In some nations, it is an official crime to broadcast material that is in any way against the interests of the state. Such vague legislation is available for use according to the political whims of the current rulers. At other times, the government and large business interests are so

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close that politically suspect TV stations and newspapers cannot get the advertising they need to survive. Even in most democratic countries, the government issues licenses for TV and radio stations. Sometimes these are withheld or delayed for political reasons. Some countries require journalists to be licensed, a practice consistently condemned by the International Press Institute as threatening freedom of the press. In other cases, the supply and distribution of newsprint is controlled by the government and may be allotted according to political considerations.

Manipulation by Timing. Even in a thriving democracy with constitutional guarantees of a free press, there are limits on news. Release of classified information damaging to national security is not permitted, although just how broad this doctrine should be has been the subject of many court challenges. In many other ways, however, the government manipulates, although does not control, the press. For example, U.S. President Gerald Ford’s pardon of ex-President Richard Nixon for any Watergate-related crimes was announced on a Sunday morning. In 1992, former President George Bush pardoned Iran-contra defendants on Christmas Day. All of these unpopular policies were announced at times of the week likely to receive the least possible coverage and attention. Often, government sources strategically leak stories about upcoming policy to gauge public reaction (trial balloon). If the reaction is negative, the policy need never be officially announced and the government will not be blamed for proposing it.

Media Self-Censorship. Sometimes censorship is self-imposed by the media. Often this is due to pressure or fear of pressure from advertisers or parent companies. The largest commercial TV networks give limited attention to major corporate changes involving themselves or to any story reflecting unfavorably on their parent company, such as ABC TV and Disney (Lee & Solomon, 1991; Steyer, 2002). It is well-documented that magazines that accept tobacco advertising publish fewer stories about the health risks of smoking than do magazines that do not accept tobacco ads (Strasburger & Wilson, 2002). Advertiser pressure can lead to self- censorship. For example, the San Jose Mercury News published a lengthy consumer story in 1994 on “how to buy a car,” including tips on negotiating with dealers and information on dealer incentives and money holdbacks and using the invoice to figure the actual cost of the car. In response, the Santa Clara County Motor Car Dealers’ Association pulled $1 million of advertising. The editor published a letter apologizing for the article and extolling the paper’s longstanding partnership with the local car dealers. There have been no further in-depth stories dealing with auto dealership issues (Lieberman, 2000).

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Sometimes newspapers or the TV networks are in possession of information that they choose not to reveal for some reason, Sometimes this may be information about troop movements, but it may also be information that some government official has lied. The press may conclude (rightly or wrongly) that the public just does not care to hear certain highly negative news about their country or government. For example, when the Soviet Union shot down a Korean commercial airliner in 1983, the Kremlin made the predictable Cold War charge that it was an American spy plane. Although this claim was widely reported in the United States, it was practically never taken seriously. In a careful analysis of the coverage of this issue by Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, Corcoran (1986) concluded that all three publications, with an estimated combined readership of around 50 million, followed a virtually identical Reagan administration party line of anti-Soviet diatribe and paranoia (see also Entman, 1991). Outside of the United States (e.g., in reputable British publications like the Guardian ) available evidence supporting the theory that the airliner was on a spy mission was fully examined and seen to be a credible explanation, though it was never either verified or discredited. Why was this perspective not heard in the United States? It was not due to government censorship but perhaps was due to the press sensing that the U.S. public did not want to seriously consider (or perhaps would not believe) such a claim.

In the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, the press chose to call President Nixon and other high U.S. government officials liars only after a considerable period of time and after compelling evidence had been presented. In the mid-1980s, the press was very hesitant to directly expose the very popular President Reagan’s communication of misinformation about Soviet involvement in Nicaragua. Only after the revelation in late 1986 that the Reagan administration had been sending arms to Iran with the profits being diverted to the Nicaraguan right-wing contra rebels did the press seem to give itself permission to seriously criticize the president. Finally, the Washington press corps long knew of the Reagan administration’s disinformation campaign in attributing a Berlin disco bombing in 1985 to Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, but said nothing.

Consolidation of News-Gathering Organizations. Although not exactly manipulation of news as such, another concern in determining the perceived reality of world events is the increasing consolidation of news-gathering organizations. Skyrocketing costs, plus the undeniable logic of efficiency, mandates a pooling of resources. Clearly, not every newspaper, news magazine, and TV and radio station can afford to have its own reporter in every potential news spot in the world.

This consolidation, however, has reduced news gatherers to a very small club. In terms of newspapers, most news copy in most newspapers comes

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from a very few sources, especially the wire services of Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and Agence France Presse (AFP). Only a very few large dailies have their own wire service (New York Times, Los Angeles Times). In terms of television, the U.S. commercial networks of ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CNN, have enormous influence worldwide. A few other major networks, such as the BBC and ITN in the United Kingdom and Brazil’s TV Globo, take large pieces of the remaining pie. These few sources have enormous impact on our perceived reality of distant events. For example, even in stridently anti-American regimes, a large percentage of the news copy comes from the AP wire service. A small number of sources is not in and of itself cause for alarm. Large organizations like the AP or CNN take great pains to present diverse and balanced viewpoints, and it is strongly in their interest to

be perceived by all as fair and unbiased. Still, however, the potential influence of any of these sources on people’s knowledge worldwide is sobering.

Another consequence of the financial realities of international news reporting is a greatly decreased number of foreign bureaus and correspondents. For example, by 1996 CBS was down from 20 to 4 major foreign bureaus (Tokyo, Moscow, Tel Aviv, London), with ABC having 8, NBC 7, and CNN 20. Although this reduction does not preclude a news anchor or Washington correspondent from reading a foreign story accompanied by visuals from file footage or freelance or government sources, the number of minutes of news stories on the three major networks from correspondents posted at foreign bureaus fell from 4,032 to 2,763 just between 1989 and 1994 (Strobel, 1997). Although 45% of news time on U.S. network news was international in the 1970s, only 13.5% was international by 1995 (Moisy, 1997). The quality of the remaining foreign stories probably fell as well.

Now that we have looked at how the media mediate between the reality of the news and the reports we receive, we examine such processes in operation in an extended case study of the reporting of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The 1991 Persian Gulf War Coverage: Case Study For 6 weeks beginning January 16, 1991, much of the world was at war for

the stated purpose of ousting Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from its occupation of neighboring oil-rich Kuwait. Until the war’s last week, the primary activity was an almost continuous U.S.-led air assault on Iraq and its forces in occupied Kuwait. This air war and one week of ground assault succeeded in ousting Iraq from Kuwait, although that country and much of Iraq lay in ruins. Conventional wisdom in government and the military was that uncontrolled press coverage of the Vietnam War (1964–1975) had contributed to the loss of (a) the war itself, the only war ever lost by the

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United States; and (b) public support for the war. This widely accepted but unsupported conventional wisdom led to the press in the Gulf War being kept on a very short leash, using the Falklands/Grenada model, as part of a tightly managed campaign where imagery was a prevailing concern. Referring to the sympathetic media coverage, former Reagan White House staff member Michael Deaver commented: “If you were going to hire a public relations firm to do the media relations for an international event, it couldn’t be done any better than this” (M.A.Lee & Solomon, 1991, p. xv).

To start with, reporters were put in pools. The numbers of persons in these pools grew during the war, up to around 200 during the ground campaign in the last week. The stated purpose of these pools was to protect journalists and prevent allied forces from being overwhelmed by reporters. Stories were subject to censorship, ostensibly to prevent the leaking of troop movement information helpful to Iraq. However, sometimes stories were held up for days, and in some instances the Pentagon actually announced the story first at its briefings.

There were total blackouts at the start of the air and ground campaigns, as well as a ban on photos of coffins of killed U.S. soldiers arriving home at Dover Air Force Base. Far from hiding from the press, however, military spokespersons held daily briefings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia at central command and at the Pentagon. These briefings were filled with facts and figures, such as the number of missions or the number of Iraqi Scud missile sites destroyed. The talks were illustrated with colorful maps and other visuals. Those holding the briefings were friendly and cooperative and appeared to provide much information. They were, however, very cautious in their estimates of Iraqi damage, apparently to avoid excessive optimism and thus hold expectations to a point that could be very easily exceeded.

Beyond their informative function, the media were used by the military to help the coalition confuse the Iraqis. For example, reporters were frequently taken to the area near the southern Kuwaiti border with Saudi Arabia but not to the western border area where the real build-up for the ground invasion was occurring. Pools were taken to cover practice maneuvers for an apparent sea assault on Kuwait, an assault that never came but was rather used to divert attention from the planned ground thrust from the west. The CIA planted a false story of 60 Iraqi tanks defecting early in the war, with the hope of encouraging actual Iraqi defections.

Although they occasionally complained, the media (especially in the United States) were remarkably compliant, even obsequious, in their acquiescence to military censorship. They continually marveled over the technological prowess of new weapons, not bothering to question the accuracy of claims of very high percentages of hits on military targets with few civilian casualties. Long after the war, missile accuracy was revealed to have been much less than reported at the time.

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Experts interviewed on TV news programs almost always supported Bush administration policy. Voices of dissent were only heard in minimal coverage of antiwar protests, typically portrayed as the domain of lunatic fringe elements. The experts interviewed were almost entirely White men, whereas polls showed that minorities and women were less likely to support the war. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was continually demonized and compared to Adolf Hitler, whereas prior U.S. support for him in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 to 1988, as well as serious human rights abuses of coalition partners Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Kuwait, were downplayed or ignored. The U.S. military’s use of fuel-air bombs and white phosphorus was almost never mentioned (M.A.Lee & Solomon, 1991).

Why was the press, in many ways so diverse and independent, so unquestioning of the military and of the Bush Administration? Partly, of course, it was because they were denied access to the real story. That cannot explain the high degree of cheerleading and uncritical support, however. Journalists were probably themselves highly supportive of the coalition effort; even the most strident critics of U.S. policy had little sympathy or support for the brutal Saddam Hussein. Just as the military and political powers were planning policy in reaction to the myth that the Vietnam War was lost because the press had had too free a hand, the media were determined not to allow themselves to be criticized as they had been in Vietnam. They were not going to be made the scapegoats for a war if it was less than a rousing success. They were not going to allow themselves to be called unpatriotic. This concern may not have been unrealistic; the little independent coverage that did occur sometimes elicited angry cries of traitor. For an interesting propaganda analysis of the Gulf War, see Jowett (1993).

In spite of efforts to discourage it, there was some independent (i.e., nonpool) coverage of the war. Most visible was CNN’s Peter Arnett, the only Western journalist left in Baghdad after the start of the air war. Arnett transmitted daily stories and photos to Western media. These were subject to Iraqi censorship and were always identified as such. This led to some charges of Saddam using Arnett for his own ends and of his being duped by Iraqi propaganda. Arnett’s reports did, in fact, show numerous photos of destruction caused by Allied bombings, the only photos then available of such damage. Some called this unfair and unpatriotic, even going so far as to picket CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta or write angry letters to the editor in newspapers.

There was other independent coverage, however. For example, Patrick Cockburn of the British Independent reported at the time how the air strikes were less successful than announced (M.A.Lee & Solomon, 1991). A massive oil slick unleashed by the Iraqis occupying Kuwait was reported by an independent British ITN crew a full two days before the pool reporters arrived (Zoglin, 1991). During the 6 weeks that the war lasted, there were

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increasing attempts by journalists to go out on their own. In one case, a CBS crew was actually captured and held by the Iraqis for a few days. If the war had lasted longer, there probably would have been greater numbers of independent reports.

Media coverage of the Gulf War continued to be debated and analyzed for many years (e.g., Iyengar & Simon, 1993). Aside from the obvious controversy around the whole censorship issue, other concerns arose. CNN became recognized as the preeminent news source and received kudos from widespread segments of electronic and print journalism. World leaders watched CNN, including George Bush and Saddam Hussein, to learn what was happening. Other TV networks carried CNN footage. To whatever extent that CNN may have boosted the fortunes of those promoting the war, the reverse may have been even more true with longer lasting effects (Zelizer, 1992). See Greenberg and Gantz (1993) and Mowlana, Gerbner, and Schiller (1993) for sets of readings on press coverage of the Persian Gulf War.

Postscript: The Iraq War of 2003. The second coalition assault on Iraq, this time in 2003 with the stated intent of removing Saddam Hussein’s government and preventing him from using weapons of mass destruction, provided an interesting contrast in terms of media coverage. This time the press was much less confined; in fact, they were invited to accompany U.S. and British troops marching into Iraq from Kuwait. These so-called “embedded” reporters sent daily stories back from the front lines. They at least had the appearance of telling a fuller story about the war than what was seen in 1991. These reporters generally had good relations with the troops they traveled with and were given fairly wide access to potential stories. Access was much less restricted than it had been in the 1991 war, although at least one maverick reporter (Geraldo Rivera) was evicted for divulging too much about troop locations.