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Study: Media Self-Censored Some Iraq Coverage Mar 18, 2005 NEW YORK Many media outlets self-censored their reporting on the Iraq (news - web sites) invasion because of concerns about public reaction to graphic images and content, according to a survey of more than 200 journalists by American University's School of Communications. The study, released Friday, also determined that "vigorous discussions" about what and where to publish information and images were conducted at media outlets and, in many cases, journalists posted material online that did not make it to print. One of the most significant findings was "the amount of editing...

Afghanistan's Taliban government is granting access to the front lines for favored U.S. TV networks, while those expected to give negative coverage are priced out of the market with exorbitant visa fees, the New York Times reported Thursday. "Reporters on the scene and news executives in the United States said that winning entry to the (front lines) depended on being a news outlet that the Afghan rulers wanted to use to convey their message. But it was also the result of having the right connections — or in the parlance of foreign correspondents, the right 'fixer.'" In terms of connections, ...

Reporters Are Told To Remind Viewers Why U.S. Is Bombing The chairman of CNN has ordered his staff to balance images of civilian devastation in Afghan cities with reminders that the Taliban harbors murderous terrorists, saying it "seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan." In a memo to his international correspondents, Walter Isaacson said: "As we get good reports from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, we must redouble our efforts to make sure we do not seem to be simply reporting from their vantage or perspective. We must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields ...

Atrocities in Fallujah and Elsewhere I warn you, what follows is in many regards more repulsive than the pictures and videos from Fallujah. Read at your own risk. WASHINGTON — Every war or disaster contains moments that become defining images: a napalmed girl or a gun to the head in Vietnam, the body of a U.S. soldier dragged through a Somalian street. It is not clear whether the 80 seconds of video Wednesday showing images of charred American bodies being beaten and dangled from the steelwork of a bridge over the Euphrates River will come to define the war in...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) -- Major newspapers ran graphic photos Thursday of charred bodies of Americans killed in Iraq, while the images were largely shunned by American television as too horrific.</p> <p>Eight photographs of the Fallujah attack, including corpses being dragged in the streets and hanging from a bridge, were transmitted Wednesday by The Associated Press with an advisory to editors to "Note graphic content."</p>

A study of television news coverage of the war in Iraq says ABC’s World News Tonight was the most antiwar — far more than CBS, NBC or Fox. — USA Today, September 9 Antiwar? What are we to make of that word, exactly? For starters, it brings to mind a twelve-year-old study on press coverage of the Catholic Church by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the same outfit that did the study mentioned above. The findings then: press coverage is anti-Catholic. The center, which works to maintain a neutral image, did not use exactly those words but did...

News from Iraq made 2003 a good year for ratings at cable news networks -- and it was especially good at Fox News. Fox, the cable ratings leader for the past two years, widened its lead over Atlanta-based CNN. Fox averaged 1.02 million viewers at any given moment, a 53 percent increase from the year before. CNN averaged 665,000, a 24 percent increase. Fox grew the most in prime time, averaging 1.7 million viewers for the 8 to 11 p.m. time slot, a 45 percent increase. CNN averaged 1.1 million, a 22 percent increase. Fox also grew slightly more than...

December 17th, 2003 Contact: Matthew T. Felling (202) 223-2942 TV News Turned Sour on Bush After Iraq War Ended Study: President's Coverage Dipped Sharply After “Mission Accomplished” Event WASHINGTON, DC- Evaluations of President Bush on the network evening news shows dropped from 56 percent positive during the Iraq war to only 32 percent positive during the six months that followed the end of formal military activity, according to a new study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). Coverage of Bush administration policies nose-dived from 49 percent positive to only 26 percent positive, a 3-to-1 negative ratio, during...

So this was the man who had terrorized nations and murdered millions. He looked more like one of those sad old urban alcoholics who make their homes in alleys out of cardboard boxes. But as television viewers saw early Sunday, it was in fact the face of Saddam Hussein, the infamous Iraqi dictator who along with terrorist monster Osama bin Laden had been one of the two most hunted men in the world. CNN, the pioneering cable news network, was first to note -- at 5:03 Sunday morning -- that reports indicated Hussein had been captured, pulled, in effect, out...

Someone will get fired for this. Unbelievably, an actually pretty good report on Nightline. Following the troops, from homefront to just began the invasion. Now in commercial.

NEW YORK -- On the cable networks there is plenty of talk about Iraq, from speculation about quagmire to the political ramifications for 2004. But there is little enthusiasm for reporting on American soldiers themselves or paying brief tribute to the lost, beyond a constant updating of the death figures. Like some kind of grim jayvee team, U.S. soldiers who have fallen in the "postwar" don't count for as much as those who had the good sense to die when everyone was watching. The only soldier any broadcast outlet seems eager to discuss is Jessica Lynch, whose story no one...

<p>This is, by far, one of the best series of reports on what is really happening in Iraq that I have seen. In the comments section underneath I will provide the links to the reports. It is long, but well worth the read.</p> <p>Right now let’s to go Baghdad for the real story in Iraq and MSNBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, Bob Arnot.</p> <p>Bob, thank you for joining us. It’s in the middle of the night over there. I want to ask you, are we getting anywhere in Iraq?</p> <p>Excerpted.</p>

U.S. TV network news about Iraq as distorted as al- Jazeera?Checking in from Iraq on Wednesday's Hardball with Chris Matthews as part of that show's look this week at "Iraq: The Real Story," Bob Arnot highlighted a Muslim ayatollah in Iraq who "is furious at the press coverage. He says not only American television, but Arabic satellite TV, such as Al-Jazeera and the Abu Dhabi station, have mis-portrayed the great success that is Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein." Arnot, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens noticed, documented how "Iraqis themselves are angrier than the American administration about the barrage of...

Live from Baghdad, fair, balanced and direct, it’s Bush TV. The Coalition Provisional Authority running Iraq, created by the Bush administration, dissatisfied with the American television news decisions on covering the conflict, is about to create its own broadcast operation, with the capacity to bypass the networks, live from Iraq, 24 hours a day."We’ve had to rely on events covered by the networks and their interpretation, and their feed back to the United States," said Dorrance Smith, the former ABC News producer and an advisor to President Bush and his father, now senior media adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority."That’s...

MSNBC’s Arnot Contradicts Media Image of Iraq in Violent Chaos Bob Arnot, who rarely appears on NBC News programs, popped up Monday night on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews to contradict the image of chaos in Iraq hyped by the media. Launching Hardball’s week-long series, “Iraq: The Real Story,” Arnot recounted the challenges faced by troops in hostile areas, but countered the negative image of the Iraqi situation he knows Americans get from TV news. Arnot argued: “The real question is, given all the death and destruction that you see on television in the United States, what’s the real deal...

It was a world exclusive for NBC's Jim Miklaszewski, the only television reporter able to show footage of the devastating attack on a Baghdad hotel that narrowly missed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.snip... Gary Thatcher, communications chief for the U.S. occupation authority [said,] "Instead of rendering or summoning aid, they focused on gathering video footage of people in agonizingly painful situations . . .snipSays Miklaszewski..."Our impression was that this was an attempt to censor the news. This event shot holes in the administration's insistence that everything was going well in Baghdad."

<p>CARDIFF, England, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- A study conducted for the BBC of reporters embedded in military units during the Iraq war has produced a mixed verdict.</p> <p>Cardiff University analysts, in a study announced Thursday, concluded such reporters were generally able to preserve their objectivity, but the practice raised serious concerns in several areas.</p>

Television reports produced by "embedded" correspondents in the Iraq conflict gave a sanitised picture of war, according to an academic study published by the BBC today. Researchers found that although reporters who accompanied the British and US military were able to be objective, they avoided images that would be too graphic or violent for British television. Some of the coverage resembled a "war film". Today, a senior BBC news executive will make a controversial case for desanitising the presentation of war on British television. In a speech to a conference of broadcasters in Budapest, Mark Damazer, deputy director of BBC...

Too much war on TV, say viewers Steven Morris Tuesday October 21, 2003 The Guardian Most viewers felt broadcasters devoted too much time to coverage of the Iraq war, according to a survey published today. Nearly two thirds of those questioned by the Independent Television Commission said station planners were wrong to give over so much of their schedules to the conflict. There was concern that the views of some parties, such as the Iraqi people and governments opposed to the war, were not heard clearly enough. Some viewers also questioned the impartiality of reporters "embedded" with British and American...

The public considered BBC television coverage of the Iraq war less objective than that of its commercial rivals, a watchdog revealed yesterday.The Independent Television Commission reported that both BBC1 and BBC2 were judged to be less "fair" in their coverage than Channel 4, Five, Sky News and ITV. The findings were released while the BBC is bracing itself for Lord Hutton's report into the death of Dr David Kelly, which is expected to criticise the corporation's journalistic standards.The ITC findings suggest that the traditional public respect for the objectivity of BBC journalism is on the wane.Of 4,000 television viewers polled,...