Mr. Jennings’s Medal [Columbia Journalism Review Alert]

Columbia Journalism Review ^ | January/February 2004 issue

[GeneD]

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 frame its findings with a discussion of anti-Catholicism in America. And the sponsors of the study, the Knights of Columbus and the Catholic League, had no trouble characterizing it as confirming “everything most people sense about media bias against the church,” as a league official put it.

But to dig beneath the scientific-sounding mumbo in that study was to discover an Alice-in-Wonderland logic that essentially weighted as anti-Catholic bias any coverage of dissent and debate within the church. In an opening explanation of its methods, the study reprinted a straight news story about an outspoken priest/intellectual who was being silenced by the Vatican. The piece quoted the priest and described some of his controversial opinion. The center then explained its analysis: “The data we collected on this story would show that it presents a debate over Church policies on internal dissent, that the Church’s policies are criticized, and that the Church is characterized as oppressive.” Really. We wonder what the center would have reporters do? Edit away the priest’s view that a church that silences him might be oppressive? Ignore the significant and interesting ferment inside the Catholic Church? Real journalists would advocate precisely the opposite.

Which brings us to the “antiwar” label the center now hangs on ABC. The center this time studied ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, from the missile strikes on Baghdad March 19 through the fall of Tikrit on April 14. It measured the “tone of coverage in terms of opinions expressed on the war, on the administration’s policies, and on the military’s performance.” Fox came out “arguably the most prowar network” overall, and ABC came out at the other end of the spectrum.

The center did not release the underlying data for these findings, just a summary with a few examples. But the examples shed light. Of the people ABC quoted about the administration’s policy on the war, “fewer than two out of every five,” had “evaluations” that “were positive.” What was deemed “negative?” The example given was a quote from an Iraqi plaintively asking ABC’s John Donvan why the U.S. forces weren’t more helpful to his wife and children, who were without food and medicine.

About the military effort, ABC’s quotes were 56 percent “positive,” according to the study, which put the network well behind Fox (78 percent), CBS (73 percent), and NBC (64 percent). But what the study deemed “negative” sounds suspiciously like a willingness to show the face of war. The example: the ABC reporter Martha Raddatz translating an Iraqi civilian’s anguished April 8 complaint: “My neighbor and my wife died here. Because of Americans, there are three families that are all under the rubble.” According to the study, ABC ran almost three times as many stories with images of civilian casualties and twice as many stories with images of military casualties as Fox. In addition, the center points out that ABC “gave voice to the complaint that the U.S. was handling civil unrest poorly on fourteen occasions” in the final days of the war, whereas “that viewpoint never appeared on Fox.” Never appeared.

The center carefully avoids spelling out conclusions, but an unspoken implication drifts off the report like vapor — that some kind of mathematical “balance” between “negative” and “positive” quotes constitutes a rough measure of truth.

We don’t think so. The job of the press in wartime is to show the real course and nature of the fighting as best it can, and that has much to do with dried blood. And when an administration — rightly or wrongly — embarks on a radical preemptive war policy that is opposed by most of the world, the journalist’s job is to make sure that dissent and debate about that policy and its implementation are fully aired. This war was sold on the idea that the U.S. should strike first before Iraq handed around weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda terrorists, that Saddam was a global terrorist, not just a regional thug. But it looks as if Iraq had no WMD to pass out even if it had been inclined to do so. It also becomes clearer every day how terribly botched was postwar planning. The debate now is about how to salvage this deadly mess and leave Iraq more stable and less dangerous than it was before.

ABC's viewers will likely be more prepared to take part in that debate and less likely than viewers of other networks to have been surprised by what has developed since the fall fo Tikrit because, despite the pressure to be a cheerleader, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings was more probing during the war than its rivals. The center's antiwar label is looking like ABC's red badge of courage.

[martin_fierro]

[Support Free Republic]

Rank	Location	Receipts	Donors/Avg		Freepers/Avg		Monthlies
30	Maine	225.00	5	45.00	81	2.78	10.00	1

Thanks for donating to Free Republic!

Move your locale up the leaderboard!

[steplock]

ABC's red badge of courage...

RED -- As in RED China? Red as in ALL communist flags? Red as in the blood of Americans who have suffered and died for the puke like these supposed reporters?

[tongue-tied]

What was deemed “negative?” The example given was a quote from an Iraqi plaintively asking ABC’s John Donvan why the U.S. forces weren’t more helpful to his wife and children, who were without food and medicine. How about "quagmire" and "apparently behind schedule" and several others I remember being espoused as an unbiased reporting of facts.

[Cicero]

Considering that the Columbia School of Journalism is at the very epicenter of corrupt leftist distortion of the news in this country, it's unlikely that one might expect an unbiased discussion of left wing bias in the Columbia Journalism Review.

These people wouldn't understand what anti-Catholic bigotry was if you hit them over the head with it, since they are anti-Catholic bigots themselves. Nor would they understand what left-wing bias was, because they are too biased themselves.

The Sulzberger family, Columbia University, The New York Times, and the left-wing media establishment are like one big, inbred incestuous family.

[weegee]

The findings then: press coverage is anti-Catholic.

Certainly the coverage seemed "antiCatholic Church". I wouldn't say that it was down on anyone who was a Catholic (the way discrimination would be).

There were/are problems within the Catholic Church hierarchy that lead to coverups and attempts to defuse the issue rather than seek punishment of the molestors and justice for the victims.

There are also such crimes going on at schools and at other churches.

Planned Parenthood has fought attempts to require abortion providers to provide police with a report when a girl comes to them for an abortion caused by molestation/rape. They cover up a crime too.

The UN has quite a number of sex scandals (UN advisors raping minors here and elsewhere and then fleeing before the cases come to trial, juvenile prostitution charges in wartorn areas,...).

Considering all the molestation going on, the media dug their fangs into one target; the Catholic Church. Maybe they went against them for the Pope and Mother Theresa's stance against abortion, who knows.

[breakem]

Maybe it was the number of cases.

Maybe it was all the Bishops and Cardinals doing nothing until their feet were held to the fire.

Maybe it's a big newsstory when the Catholic Church has a once in a 1000 year major scandal.

[Sloth]

...embarks on a radical preemptive war policy that is opposed by most of the world, the journalist’s job is to make sure that dissent and debate about that policy and its implementation are fully aired. This war was sold on the idea that the U.S. should strike first before Iraq handed around weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda terrorists, that Saddam was a global terrorist, not just a regional thug. But it looks as if Iraq had no WMD to pass out even if it had been inclined to do so. It also becomes clearer every day how terribly botched was postwar planning.

Yes, the people who wrote these words are highly competent to judge bias regarding Iraq. < /sarcasm >

[Sloth]

It's talking about a 12-year-old study, with respect to the Catholic church. Before the big sexual scandals, in other words.

[weegee]

In addition, the center points out that ABC “gave voice to the complaint that the U.S. was handling civil unrest poorly on fourteen occasions” in the final days of the war, whereas “that viewpoint never appeared on Fox.” Never appeared.

A lot of the furor over "civil unrest" could be tied to since discredited reports of "looting" of Iraq's museums.

[weegee]

This war was sold on the idea that the U.S. should strike first before Iraq handed around weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda terrorists, that Saddam was a global terrorist, not just a regional thug.

Denial that Saddam sponsored terrorism? Okay...

Here's what the previous President had to say in 2003 about Saddam and future administrations:

An Interview With Bill Clinton (Atlantic Monthly)

We knew when we did the bombing in '98 that we hit all the known or suspected sites based on the intelligence we had, from all the people that were doing that work there. We knew at the time that we had set his program back a couple years. But sooner or later in the millennium the new Administration, whether it was Gore's or Bush's, would have to take this matter up again.

Deny, deny, deny...

The writer of this piece should realize that his denials are a bias themselves (disregard of fact for partisan politicking).

[weegee]

We know that the Catholic Church (Bishops, Cardinals, and Pope) are being taken to task by Big Media for not having a better control of those under them.

Why isn't there outrage among the media for the number of Islamofascist mosques operating in Great Britain, the US, and elsewhere?

One sin does not excuse the other but Islamic violence and hate speech gets a blind eye from the press (which also pins Israel as an oppressor and European antiSemitism as something that's "not a big problem").

[breakem]

Thanx, but I was responding to the last point in #7.

[breakem]

I responded to your comment about coverage of the catholic church's scabdal. If you want to know the reasons for the rest of the stuff, I don't know. Ask someone else.

[breakem]

scabal=scandal

[ALOHA RONNIE]

NEVER FORGET


'Associated Press must return it's bogus -NO GUN RI- PULITZER'

http://www.TheAlamoFILM.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=509


NEVER FORGET