Significant Media Self-Censorship on Iraq

by Chris Bowers, Sat Mar 19, 2005 at 09:06:45 AM EST

What we always suspected turns out to be exactly true: Many media outlets self-censored their reporting on the Iraq invasion because of concerns about public reaction to graphic images and content, according to a survey of more than 200 journalists by American University's School of Communications.

The study, released Friday, also determined that "vigorous discussions" about what and where to publish information and images were conducted at media outlets and, in many cases, journalists posted material online that did not make it to print. <p. One of the most significant findings was "the amount of editing that went into content after it was gathered but before it was published," the study stated. Of those who reported from Iraq, 15% said that on one or more occasions their organizations edited material for publication and they did not believe the final version accurately represented the story.<p> Of those involved in war coverage who were in newsrooms and not in Iraq, 20% said material was edited for reasons other than basic style and length.

. Some 42% of those polled said they were discouraged from showing photographic images of dead Americans, while 17% said they were prohibited. Journalists were also discouraged from showing pictures of hostages, according to 36% of respondents, while only 3% reported being prohibited from showing them.<p[> American University professors MJ Bear and Jane Hall conducted the survey of 210 journalists from the United States and other countries, who completed the anonymous, online questionnaire in September and October 2004.(...)

Although the questions covered events from the beginning of the war through September 2004 -- the first 15 months of the occupation -- it focused primarily on decision-making during major events such as the release of the Abu Ghraib prison photographs and the images showing the deaths of four American contractors in Fallujah.(...)

Among respondents who were in Iraq, 27% said their organization had prior rules in place about what they would or would not publish, and 31% of those who were based in newsrooms said their organization had prior rules. Coverage sensitivity focused more on the type of images published.

Among those who did not have such rules in place, 39% reported being unable to show images of dead Americans at some point, while 22% said they were not allowed to show images of hostages at times.

And to think I would like the media to better report on something as comparatively small as polls. Clearly, we are dealing with a broken institution.

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I pretty much ignore the corporate media. I hear second hand how bad it is, except for gathering background clips for stories I'm working on.  

Anyway, yesterday, I did an interview with Aidan Delgado, the CO who served 6 months in Nasarya and 6 months in Abu Ghraib, who was interviewed on Democracy Now a few months back.  Now, he has a very interesting and unique perspective. And he was can provide an insider's perspective on Abu Ghraib--though not directly on the torture units.

You would think that, just for the sake of doing well-rounded reporting, he would have been contacted to do a fair number of interviews with corporate news outlets. He certainly would have back during the Vietnam War, I can guarantee you that.  

You would think wrong.

Reality: He told me that Democray Now was the most mainstream interview he has done.

In light of this sort of comment, what I find amazing about the above report is that journalists wrote things in the first place that higher-ups felt the need to censor additionally.  

Now, I know that I ordinarily don't say things like this. I ordinarily defend individual journalists, because I know that there are a lot of people out there doing very good work. And many of them have years more of experience than I do, and a lot of different skills that I don't have. (I'm still far more of an academic-style researcher than a journalistic investigator.)  

But my interview with Delgado just sickened me. In part from what I just recounted, and in part from the fact that he read stuff to me from the Taguba report, and it reminded me of what a tremendous job the media did in burying that.  

I should also have been sickened by core content of what he told me, about how Iraqi prisoners were treated, about the endemic racism, about how most of those at Abu Ghraib weren't terrorists, etc. But I already knew these specifics, and frankly, I was already sickened enough for ten lifetimes by similar revelations in Vietnam 30 years ago. So I'll set that aside for now. I expect the military to do sickening things. To be utterly depraved. That's why I am opposed to war. Because fighting monsters that way turns you into a monster yourself.  

But now our media is acting as if it were state-run. As if it were Pravda.  There is simply no reason to believe any of it.  It exists in order to convince people that Iraq had WMD's, and was involved in 9/11 even after it has been conclusively shown that it did not. It exists in order to fill people's minds with lies.  There never was a golden age of journalism.  But what we have now makes lead look like gold.

by Paul Rosenberg 2005-03-19 05:56PM | 0 recs

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