ESRC Society Today

The relationship between the media and governments during the reporting of wars is a sensitive one, setting the drive for media autonomy against government efforts to influence coverage. Previous research has suggested that the media tends to become deferential towards government in such circumstances. This study involved a rigorous and detailed analysis of media reporting during the 2003 Iraq War. Researchers from Liverpool and Leeds universities examined news coverage of the main conflict period on BBC, ITV, Sky News and Channel Four, and in the Telegraph, Times, Guardian/Observer, Independent, Mail, Mirror, and Sun/ News of the World. It found the tone of coverage of the military campaign - which dominated the news agenda - largely favourable towards the US-UK coalition, although the media was more inclined to challenge official positions on topics such as humanitarian operations and civilian casualties.

Key Findings 

• Coalition media-management sought to promote three types of message - progress of the war; commitment to a sovereign Iraqi state and efforts to deliver humanitarian aid.
  
  
• The progress of the battle dominated news reports during the course of the conflict. More than 56 per cent of all television reports and 49 per cent of newspaper stories concerned the military campaign or related matters of strategy. Coverage was largely events-driven.
  
  
• Coalition officials had most access to news outlets, being mentioned in more than 80 per cent of television and newspaper reports. Representatives of the Iraqi regime were well represented (more than 50 per cent for both television and newspapers) as were Iraqi civilians (40 per cent for television and 31 per cent for newspapers). Other interested parties, including the anti-war movement, UN officials and humanitarian organisations, secured far less media access.  
  
  
• The research judged more than 90 per cent of television news coverage and more than 80 per cent of broadsheet newspaper material to be straight reporting (ie. without evaluation): by this measure much of the UK media fulfilled expected norms of neutrality and objectivity. There was, however, a clear tendency to depart from objective reporting when discussing the Iraqi regime.
  
  
• Many reports about the military campaign favoured the coalition and all media outlets became more deferential towards government during the period of major combat operations.
  
  
• Although battle coverage was rarely problematic for the coalition, the media were more critical with some topics. Fewer than 11 per cent of reports about civilian casualties played positively for the coalition. Most reports were critical of coalition attempts to manage humanitarian operations.
  
  
• Sky News and ITV were most likely to report good news for the coalition; Channel Four News carried the greatest proportion of critical coverage. The Sun gave the most explicit support to coalition operations among newspapers but much newspaper coverage - even in the Independent and Daily Mirror, the most avowedly anti-war publications - was supportive of the military campaign.
  
  
• Coverage mainly served to reinforce official justifications for war, in particular the humanitarian case for regime change in Iraq. Media debate over the reasons for the action tailed off once the war started. The tendency was for news media to accept the official position and this enabled the coalition's moral case for the war to go by default. 

About the Study

The research was conducted by Dr Piers Robinson and Mr Peter Goddard of the University of Liverpool (Dr Robinson is now at the University of Manchester) and Dr Robin Brown and Prof Philip Taylor of the University of Leeds. It involved analysing and coding coalition media management operations and media coverage, and combining the analyses to probe the relationship between coalition attempts to present the war favourably and media efforts to maintain autonomy.

Key Words

Media, media management, news, Newspapers, Television, Iraq

View all other award details