A couple years ago, when the Iraq war was just entering its pubescent period and we were only beginning to realize the extent of the insurgency, I saw a debate on FOX News Sunday on the progress of the war. One of the conservatives–I think it was Britt Hume–was trying to argue that the war was actually going quite well, and he was blaming the growing American concern about the war on the press’ reporting. He commented that if only the American media would leave the Green Zone and get out of Baghdad (where most of the attacks were occurring) and into the countryside, they would be able to see a lot of substantial progress being made: schools opening, power going on, people shopping, etc. They were staying in and around Baghdad, however, where all the bombs and violence were happening, and therefore they were showing the American public a negatively skewed version of the war. One of the other panelists–I believe it was Mara Liason–chimed in that a) the media couldn’t leave the Green Zone or get out of Baghdad because they had to go where the military told them, and b) they had to go where the military told them because it wasn’t safe to move around Iraq without an escort. In other words, if only the bad guys weren’t shooting at us so much, then we could see how well the war was going.
I was reminded of that exchange this past week, when once again President Bush and his apologists have decided that the biggest problem with the Iraq War is the media portrayal. If only the media would portray the good in Iraq, and not the bad, then the public wouldn’t be turning against the war! It is certainly a convenient excuse, and there likely is some truth to it. It is, after all, a common critique of the media (from both liberal and conservative sources, I might add) that they tend to show the bad more than the good. Shootings get better ratings than cat rescues and city council meetings, which is why people overestimate crime and underestimate the work ethic of local politicians. We shouldn’t be surprised at this same dynamic in Iraq. It’s more interesting news when five American soldiers die in a car bomb than when the rate of new telephone subscriptions increases to double what it was under Saddam Hussein.
That being said, however, it is a pretty flimsy excuse. First of all, it is not hard to predict what the media will and won’t cover–a fact that both the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have exploited time and time again. Any political analyst could have said that if you sell a war as a quick victory, and get embroiled in fighting a domestic insurgency for several years, that the public is likely to grow increasingly skeptical of the war, and that the media is likely to focus more on the negative and less on the positive as time goes on. The same thing happened in Korea, in Vietnam, in Somalia, and in Bosnia; we shouldn’t be surprised when it happens in Iraq. Long-term occupations of foreign countries require a long-term commitment from the American people; President Bush did not get that commitment before starting this war, and he only has himself to blame for that.
Moreover the media reports what they see and hear. One reason for the steady stream of reports on violence and chaos in Iraq is that, in fact, there is a constant level of violence and chaos in Iraq to report. I saw on CNN last week a conservative critic who chided the media for doing too many stories about bombings from their hotel balconies; to which the CNN analyst retorted that during the previous week, the five major news channels had aired exactly one story of a reporter talking from his hotel balcony, and it was a case where a car bomb had exploded in front of the hotel. We are fighting a war, wars are violent, and the media will cover that violence.
So don’t blame the media for reporting what they see and hear. If the Pentagon and the Bush Administration wants to have more positive media reporting, then they should make the situation on the ground in Iraq better. And if they can’t do that, which is becoming increasingly apparent, then they should not be surprised at the growing discontent among the American people.
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