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COPYRIGHT 2003 Society for the Advancement of Education
TELEVISION COVERAGE of the Iraqi war and postwar illustrates once again how American television news is obsessed with show business terminology that at the very least is poor journalism and at its worst corrupts and ignores a basic rule of journalism: fairness and accuracy in all reporting.
With the government's public relations arm pushing hard, phrases to describe the war and postwar stories moved from a fair account of what was going on to an oppressive vocabulary that gave a spin to the coverage. Colorful phrases, sometimes patriotic, sometimes just plain wrong, gave much of the TV news coverage a convenient anti-Iraqi/pro-American stance. Some examples:
"Operation Iraqi Freedom" was used constantly by Fox and MSNBC as a banner for summing up the coverage of the war in the Middle East. Few would dispute that "Operation Iraqi Freedom" sounded noble and gave a heroic and honorable reason for going to war as opposed to the accurate and...
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