Researchers: British Media Coverage of Iraq War Favored Government View

TBO ^ | 11/6/03 | Beth Gardiner

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

LONDON (AP) - British broadcasters often favored the government's view on the Iraq war and provided a sanitized picture of violence by not showing their grisliest images, according to a study commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corp. released Thursday. While many critics accused the BBC of an anti-war bias, the study by journalism professor Justin Lewis found that it and most other British TV outlets gave greater weight to official comments than to skeptical ones.

Lewis concluded there was no indication that journalists "embedded" with U.S. and British forces had a pro-military slant. Most were clearly working to protect their objectivity and "on key issues, were demonstrably able to do so," he wrote in The Guardian newspaper.

Battlefield coverage often exposed inaccuracies in assertions by military sources, concluded Lewis, who worked with a team of researchers at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.

But he said that because broadcasters avoided showing graphic images that might disturb viewers, they gave a sanitized view of the war.

"As a result, many viewers felt that the front-line footage provided by embeds was like watching a 'war film' - full of action, but without the grisly consequences," Lewis wrote.

At the same time, front-line reporting often took precedence over other issues, oversimplifying the conflict, he added.

Lewis and his colleagues interviewed 27 broadcast journalists and 10 British and U.S. defense officials described as "key personnel," the BBC said in a summary of the findings.

They conducted an extensive analysis of television and radio broadcasts, comparing overall coverage by four of Britain's main television outlets in 1,534 reports and then looking at how a wider range of broadcasters, including some on cable television and radio, reported seven selected events, the BBC said.

The researchers said British broadcasters were more evenhanded than their American counterparts, whom the team said displayed an "overt bias" in favor of U.S. forces.

But the British journalists did tend to assume that what they were told by the government was true, the researchers said.

Nine out of every 10 references to weapons of mass destruction displayed a presumption that Iraq possessed them, Lewis wrote.

"This suggests that 'spin' from the British and U.S. governments was successful in framing the coverage, while the doubters were less heeded," he wrote.

Questions about whether Saddam Hussein had such banned arms have become central to the postwar debate, with critics citing the coalition's failure to find evidence of the weapons to accuse Britain and America of hyping arguments for war.

The research team also found that British broadcasters were twice as likely during the war to portray Iraqis as favoring the U.S.-led invasion than to show them as suspicious or hostile.

While journalists in Iraq gave a balanced picture of opinion there, news anchors referred seven times more often to jubilant Iraqis than disgruntled ones, the team said.

[vbmoneyspender]

British broadcasters often favored the government's view on the Iraq war

As opposed to favoring Saddam Hussein's view of the war?