The Iraq News Blackout

The Iraq news blackout: how the press spent its summer vacation

By Eric Boehlert

Created Sep 6 2007 - 9:18am

News that Katie Couric would anchor the CBS Evening News from Baghdad this

week [1] created a major media splash [2]. After earlier suggesting that

type of assignment would be too treacherous for a single mother of two,

Couric did an about-face. She stressed that as a journalist she wanted to

get a better sense, a firsthand account, of how events were unfolding inside

Iraq; to give the story more context.

It's ironic because if CBS had simply aired more reporting from Iraq this

summer instead of joining so many other news outlets in walking away from

the story, then perhaps Couric wouldn't have had to travel 8,000 miles to

find out the facts on the ground.

Couric's high-profile assignment helps underscore the shocking disconnect

that has opened up between American news consumers and the mainstream media.

The chasm revolves around the fact that public polling indicates consumers

are starved for news [3] from Iraq, yet over the summer the mainstream

media, and particularly television outlets such as CBS, steadfastly refused

to deliver it. The press has walked away from what most Americans claim is

the day's most important ongoing news event.

The media's coverage from Iraq has naturally ebbed and flowed over the

four-and-a-half years since the invasion. And escalating security concerns

in Iraq have made it both more difficult and more expensive [4] for news

organization to operate there.

But the pullback we've seen this summer, the chronic dearth of on-the-ground

reporting, likely marks a new low of the entire campaign. It's gotten to the

point where even monstrous acts of destruction cannot wake the press from

its self-induced slumber. Just recall the events of August 14.

That's when witnesses to the four synchronized suicide truck bombs that

detonated in northern Iraq on that day described the collective devastation

unleashed to being like an earthquake, or even the site of a nuclear bomb

[5] explosion; the destruction of one bomb site measured half a mile wide. A

U.S. Army spokesman, after surveying the mass carnage from an attack that

targeted Yazidis, an ancient religious community, called the event

genocidal. Indeed, more than 500 Iraqis were killed, more than 1,500 were

wounded, and 400 buildings were destroyed.

The bombings in the towns of Tal al-Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar marked the

deadliest attack of the entire Iraq war. In fact, with a death toll topping

500, the mid-August bombing ranks as the second deadliest terror strike ever

recorded [6] in modern times. Only the coordinated attacks on 9-11 have

claimed more innocent lives. Yet the press failed to put the story in

context.

Early news dispatches about the attacks (which pegged the early death toll

at a smaller, but still remarkable, 175) were posted [7] around 6 p.m. ET on

August 14. Yet that night on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, the hour-long news

program that airs at 10 p.m., the carnage from Iraq garnered just a brief

report, and that was relegated to the "360 Bulletin," halfway through the

program; a report on a playground catching on fire due to spontaneous

combustion of decomposing wood chips was given slightly more airtime and,

unlike the suicide bombings, prompted a reaction from host Cooper himself:

"That's incredible. I never heard of that." Less surprising was the fact

that a pro-Bush outlet such as The Drudge Report, as late as 10:30 p.m. that

night, was ignoring the massive blast headline, or that Fox News gave the

gruesome attack just three mentions all evening.

The next day, as noted [8] by the Columbia Journalism Review, the story was

placed on A6 in both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and Page

4 of USA Today. On that evening's NBC Nightly News, the historic massacre

from Iraq was not even tapped as the day's most important story. (Ongoing

mortgage woes led the broadcast that night.)

The media's tepid response to the cataclysmic event was telling. It simply

underscored how Iraq fatigue afflicts American newsrooms -- but not American

households.

That Americans are obsessed about Iraq is no surprise. Polling has

consistently shown they think the war is far and away the single most

important issue [9] facing the country. And it wasn't like there was no news

[10] happening in Iraq between June and August; the months formed the

deadliest summer of the war for U.S. military men and women. To say nothing

of the approximately 5,000 Iraqi civilians killed [11] this summer.

Politically, the drastic news withdrawal from Iraq carries deep

implications, with the debate about America's role in Iraq due to become

even more heated next week as Gen. David H. Petraeus testifies before

Congress and the White House produces its report on the status in Iraq. But

how are Americans supposed to make informed decisions about this country's

future role in Iraq if the mainstream media won't inform the public?

Also, no news from Iraq has usually meant good news for the Bush White

House; whenever Iraq has faded from view [12] in recent years, Bush and his

policies often received a bump in the polls. For instance, in July, the

results from a CBS/New York Times poll raised eyebrows [13] when it found

that support for the invasion of Iraq -- which for years had been

tumbling -- suddenly experienced an uptick, from 35 to 42 percent.

What's telling is that during the month of July, much of the mainstream

media effectively boycotted news from Iraq. Despite sky-high interest among

news consumers, stories about the situation in Iraq represented just four

percent of the mainstream media's reporting for the month, according to the

Project for Excellence in Journalism's News Coverage Index. The index

catalogs how much time and space 48 major news outlets devote to various

topics each week. The index is broken down by medium: radio, newspapers,

online, cable, and network television. (Click here [14] to the see the news

outlets monitored by the Coverage Index.)

To put that miniscule 4 percent into perspective: For the month of July,

coverage of the fledgling 2008 presidential campaign received nearly three

times as much mainstream media news attention as did the unfolding war in

Iraq that claimed 79 American lives in July.

In fact, in July Iraq itself rarely ranked among the week's five

most-covered stories. And if it weren't for the more robust Iraq reporting

that appeared in newspapers and online, events in Iraq probably wouldn't

have even ranked among the 10 most-covered stories during the month of July.

That's because network and cable television, by contrast, were virtually

oblivious to the story.

For instance, over the last seven weeks ABC's Nightline, the network's

signature, long-form news program, did not air a single substantive report

about Iraq. Not one among the 100-plus news segments the program aired

during the stretch was about the situation in Iraq. (That, according to a

search of Nightline's transcripts via Nexis.) For instance, on the night

after the mammoth suicide bomb blasts in Iraq on August 14, Nightline aired

reports about a Mexican stem cell doctor, lullaby singer Lori McKenna, and

soccer star David Beckham. That week, Nightline did two separate reports

about the earthquake in Peru that killed approximately 500 civilians. But

nothing that week from Nightline about the suicide blasts in Iraq that also

killed approximately 500 civilians.

Instead of Iraq, here are some of the news stories Nightline staffers

devoted time and energy to during that seven-week summer span:

a.. The popularity of organic pet food.

b.. The favorite songs of Pete Wentz, bassist for the pop/rock band Fall

Out Boy.

c.. The folding of supermarket tabloid, The Weekly World News.

d.. The rise of urban McMansions.

e.. The death of the postcard.

f.. The commercial battle between Barbie and Bratz dolls.

g.. The nerd stars of the movie Superbad.

News consumers remained starved for reports from Iraq

The media's dramatic news withdrawal from Iraq might be justified, on some

level, if evidence showed that Americans had grown bored of the war in Iraq.

Journalism is a public service but it's also a business and editors and

producers are always trying to find the right mix of news that consumers

need and news they want to have. If Americans were zoning out Iraq, then why

should news outlets try to force-feed updates to news consumers?

But the truth is Americans are borderline obsessed with news from Iraq. And

it's the mainstream media that's abdicated their news gathering

responsibility.

That stunning disconnect becomes obvious when comparing the PEJ's weekly

News Coverage Index with the Pew Research Center for the People and the

Press' weekly News Interest Index, a survey [15] "aimed at gauging the

public's interest in and reaction to major news events." Pew asks 1,000

adults which story in the news they are following "very closely" that week.

The two weekly surveys simultaneously gage which stories news consumers are

paying very close attention to and which stories news editors and producers

are paying close attention to (i.e. which stories they're covering).

As I mentioned, the disconnect is absolutely shocking when it comes to the

situation in Iraq, which as a news story consistently ranked near the top of

the News Interest Index this summer, while simultaneously ranking near the

bottom of the News Coverage Index.

For instance, at the outset of the summer for the work week of June 24-29

[16], 32 percent of adults were following the situation in Iraq "very

closely," but the story represented only 4 percent of that week's news

hole -- a 28-point gap. That same trend played out all summer, with that gap

often ballooning:

% following situation in Iraq "very closely" % of national news hole

devoted to Iraq war % Gap

July 1-6 [17] 36 3 33

July 8-13 [18] 25 4 21

July 15-20 [19] 28 6 22

July 22-27 [20] 28 3 25

July 29-August 3 [21] 29 5 24

August 5-10 [22] 36 5 31

August 12-17 [23] 33 5 28

August 19-24 [24] 34 5 29

On average during the summer, 31 percent paid very close attention to the

situation in Iraq, making it far and away the hottest news topic throughout

the season. Yet on average, the situation in Iraq represented just 4.5

percent of the overall news coverage. No other story, as tracked by the News

Interest Index and the News Coverage Index, produced such a consistently

wide disparity between June and September.

In other words, week after week a clear plurality of Americans said the

situation in Iraq was a story they followed very closely. Yet week after the

week much of the mainstream press responded with a so-what shoulder shrug.

And nobody was shrugging their shoulders more often than television news

producers, who all but gave up covering the war in Iraq this summer. For the

week [25] of August 5-10, for instance, when news consumer interest in Iraq

peaked at 36 percent, the story didn't even represent 3 percent of cable

television's news hole.

Or this: In the second quarter [26] of 2007 (the most recent quarterly data

available from PEJ), MSNBC devoted just 1.5 percent of its overall news

coverage to documenting events in Iraq.

But hey, now that Katie Couric has rediscovered Iraq, perhaps the rest of

the press will follow.

A footnote: For those who wade through the News Coverage Index data, you'll

note a category dubbed "Iraq Policy" which has received lots of mainstream

media attention this summer, often topping the News Coverage Index. But

that's not to be confused with reporting about the Iraq war itself. Reports

about the Beltway debate over Iraq policy are much different than reports

about the situation in Iraq. The policy debate has mostly been covered as a

horserace: Do Democrats have the votes to end the war? Can Bush still keep

anxious Republicans in line? It's what the Beltway press loves to obsess

over -- who's up, who's down, and what the 2008 implications are. Americans,

though, are more interested in a war, now in its 53rd month, being waged in

the Persian Gulf that has claimed nearly 4,000 American lives and is costing

the U.S. Treasury $1 billion each week to fight.

_______

About author A senior fellow at Media Matters for America, and a former

senior writer for Salon, Boehlert's first book, "Lapdogs: How The Press

Rolled Over for Bush," was published in May. He can be reached at

eboehlert@aol.com [27]

--

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson

Gandalf Grey wrote:

>

> The bombings in the towns of Tal al-Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar marked the

> deadliest attack of the entire Iraq war. In fact, with a death toll topping

> 500, the mid-August bombing ranks as the second deadliest terror strike ever

the suicide bombings, prompted a reaction from host Cooper himself:

> "That's incredible. I never heard of that." Less surprising was the fact

> that a pro-Bush outlet such as The Drudge Report, as late as 10:30 p.m. that

> night, was ignoring the massive blast headline, or that Fox News gave the

> gruesome attack just three mentions all evening.

>

500 people killed in one day and it hardly hit the news. And they call

themselves journalists? Wouldn't be easier to simply refer to them by

their proper name - propagandists for the Bush White House?

When reports come out saying the surge failed the media gives them a few

minutes tops, but then the media quickly moves on to another topic so

Bush can keep his war going endlessly.

--

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