In a Nov. 30 campus panel discussion, three journalism experts offered various criticisms of wartime coverage in Iraq, focusing on issues of media bias, inadequate investigation by journalists of the Bush administration’s argument for war and the decline in perceived status of the press.
Robert Kittle, editorial page editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, opened the dialogue by examining partiality in the reporting of wartime news. Kittle said the process of embedding war correspondents in military units and quartering them with soldiers made coverage more favorable toward the conflict. While acknowledging the potential problem, Kittle said he also believed that human nature made some degree of bias inevitable as a result of the close working relationships between reporters and their sources, regardless of the story’s subject.
“The question is, does this embedding process compromise the essential independence of reporters, and I think it does, it certainly does,” Kittle said. “Does the embedding system give you a full picture of the war? Of course not. And no news organization would rely or should rely exclusively on their embedded reporters because they are only getting a tiny glimpse of battle.”
Kittle also charged that journalists failed in their duty to verify information used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
“The news media in general tended to accept what was being said about the security situation in Iraq by the Bush administration with relatively little skepticism,” Kittle said. “It turns out we all should have been much more skeptical, because the intelligence, as we know now, was flawed. … I think in the future we are all going to be healthily more skeptical and I think that will serve our readers and viewers a lot better.”
Michael Mosettig, a senior producer for defense and foreign policy at PBS’ “Newshour with Jim Lehrer,” agreed.
“Of all of us in the business, there isn’t anybody who thinks that we shouldn’t have been more aggressive in questioning what the administration was saying about the claims of weapons of mass destruction for [justifying] the war,” Mosettig said.
Mosettig compared the role of media in Iraq to that of previous armed conflicts, especially the Vietnam War.
“The press came out of Vietnam somewhat battered, but very confident about its own performance and its own place in the social and cultural firmament in this country,” Mosettig said. “Coming out of Iraq into the first decade of this century, I don’t think we can say we are confident about either of those things.”
Orville Schell, dean of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, said he was displeased with the media’s presentation of the events leading up to the war, andcriticizes the commercial interests of news networks.
“There were simply almost no major media outlets doing what I think they ought to have done by way of being watchdogs and skeptics,” Schell said. “Prewar coverage was bad, especially on television, because it was not as profitable as ‘The Apprentice.’ It was difficult for a big network to have a debate because they couldn’t find one hour at any time of day to have it.”
The panel also discussed possible reasons for an increasingly unfavorable attitude toward the press.
“There is not only a lack of indulgence for embracing the media as a watchdog, but we find people demeaning it, tarring it as ‘liberal,’ ‘troublemakers’ or ‘unpatriotic,’ which makes it very difficult for [journalists] to do what they really ought to be doing,” Schell said.
Schell said he felt the Bush administration exemplified the practice, citing what he sees as its combative relationship with the media.
“There is not only a disrespect for the role of the media, but also a reincarnated view of where the truth, knowledge and understanding come from. There is this feeling amongst many people in the media of this administration’s [idea] of revealed truth, not empirical truth — not truth born from discussion, research, knowledge or empirical evidence … but just in a room as a kind of revelation,” Schell said. “The people who ask questions are seen as troublemakers, and that they can’t possibly be patriotic if they are impeding the process of the government doing its revealed work. That is a very dangerous turn of events.”
During a question-and-answer period, audience member Sandra Dijkstra criticized the media, including the panel members, for continuing to report poorly on ongoing developments in Iraq.
“The press sold this war and now they are selling it again. We have just destroyed Fallujah … where is the press?” Dijkstra asked. “It’s not about looking back to the run-up to the war, it’s about looking back to the continued destruction of Iraq and the planned invasion of Iran.”
The program was moderated by Miles Kahler, the director of UCSD’s Institute for International, Comparative and Area studies, which sponsored the event.
