Coverage of the war has been ‘massively scaled back this year’

June 23, 2008

Last week, Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News, appeared on “The Daily Show,” and shared her frustration about the lack of coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the American media. Asked how she gets through to the network, Logan said, “Generally what I say is, ‘I’m holding the armor-piercing [rocket-propelled grenade]. It’s aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don’t put my story on the air, I’m going to pull the trigger.'”

She was kidding, of course, but her dissatisfaction was palpable. Logan noted that last month, more coalition soldiers were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq — and then wondered aloud how many Americans realize that, and how many news outlets have reported it. Logan also relayed an anecdote about working diligently to get embedded with a group of Navy Seals, only to be told the network wasn’t interested. A producer, who is no longer with CBS, told her, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.”

Logan’s experiences are not unique.

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.”

In a telephone interview last week, Ms. Logan said the CBS News bureau in Baghdad was “drastically downsized” in the spring. The network now keeps a producer in the country, making it less of a bureau and more of an office.

I vaguely recall a time in which the war in Iraq was, and was expected to remain, the dominant issue in the discourse. Yes, a recent decline in violence may have helped push the war in Iraq off the front page, but it’s not as if the war is over and the conditions our troops are facing every day no longer matter.

I’m not picking on CBS News — the problem is not unique to one network, though CBS seems to now offer less war coverage than its competitors — but when Paul Friedman tells the NYT that the news division does not get enough reports from Iraq to warrant a Baghdad bureau, I’m inclined to ask him a couple of questions. First, why is it the chief foreign correspondent for the network feels like she’s running into a wall when she wants more airtime for the wars? And second, if the bureau isn’t filing enough reports, is CBS giving the bureau more assignments?

But it’s those numbers that are especially hard to overcome. Last year, Iraq got 1,157 minutes on the three network newscasts (“CBS Evening News,” ABC’s “World News,” and “NBC Nightly News”). Halfway through 2008, the number stands at 181. It means we’re on pace for a nearly 85% 70% reduction in coverage.

Hilzoy added:

A lot of people are quite interested in what’s happening in Iraq. How many? I have no idea: my attempts to find out via Google haven’t gotten me very far. But even supposing, for the sake of argument, that our interest has waned: so what? “Viewer interest” isn’t static and unalterable. The media decides to hype stories all the time, and in so doing makes people care about things they wouldn’t care about otherwise. The war in Iraq has a lot more intrinsic interest than the death of Anna Nicole Smith, the vagaries of Paris Hilton, or any of the other completely inane stories that the networks somehow manage to find time for. It shouldn’t be beyond the imaginations of reporters and producers to find a way to bring that interest out.

And we ought to care. We are responsible for the present state of Iraq, and we ought to care what happens there. Besides, we have men and women risking their lives in Iraq. We owe both Iraqis and our troops more than 181 weekday minutes, for all three networks. That’s about two minutes of Iraq coverage, per network, per week. And that’s far too little.

What’s more, it might get worse. The NYT piece concluded, “Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election.”

It’s obvious the corporate controlled media do not want the war to be foremost in the minds of the voting public in this election year.

  • what Skitso said. Nothing to see here, move along.

    BTW, anyone who didn’t see the Logan Daily Show interview should (sorry they have gone to full episodes only). She is just amazingly competent, honest, and passionate about telling the truth. She and CNN’s Michael Ware make up for a lot of lousy journalism.

    And Logan disproves every blond joke you have ever heard.

  • and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.

    I wonder how much of the 74 minutes is telling us that poll numbers indicate that Iraq is no longer the number one concern of voters.

  • One can understand the motivations of a house-organ like Fox, who might view Iraq news to be detrimental to the interest of their fearless leaders. So leave them out, they’re not a news organization. The others, though, don’t seem concerned about what used to be so quaintly called “the public interest”. News coverage can lead public opinion, but not if those who make decisions about leading attention to a topic believe more in the welfare of their corporations than in the public’s right to know.

    Again, I see the old institutions falling down on the job, and eventually falling down.

  • It would be interesting to compile some stats about the minutes devoted to the occupations (i.e. shooting conflict where American military personnel are fighting) vs celebrity news coverage.

    The Republican owned and operated Corp Media is yet another embarassment to our country. To the rest of the world, we must look like the biggest Banana Republic that has ever existed.

  • Bush volunteered us into the war in Iraq. Our military is all volunteer. And now our major news outlets on TV have volunteered to diminish their coverage of this ongoing debacle. So much for volunteering. It’s time to demand more from those who are profiteering on this folly of war brought to us all by one Mr. Bush and one Mr. Cheney. -Kevo

  • Logan noted that last month, more coalition soldiers were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq — and then wondered aloud how many Americans realize that, and how many news outlets have reported it.

    Somewhat misleading. While it is ominous that violence has increased in Afghanistan, it not as bad as this makes it sound, since tidbit also reflects the fact that last month was the least deadly month of the war so far for the American military in Iraq.

  • So now the corporate media who shamelessly promoted Bush’s illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq because it would bump their ratings don’t want to have anything to do with it. I’m not surprised. Who in their right mind would want to keep reminding the American sheeple of their complicity in such a hideous disaster?

  • Hey JoeBob – How many deaths make the occupation “acceptable”?
    Before you answer, pretend that some of the deaths & injuries were your own kids and see if that makes a difference.

  • Danp said:
    and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.

    “I wonder how much of the 74 minutes is telling us that poll numbers indicate that Iraq is no longer the number one concern of voters.”

    And I wonder how much the ‘poll numbers’ are being driven by the lack of coverage by the Corporate News Media?

    Corporate Amerika and its Corporate News Media want Bush’s wars to be a lesser or non-factor in this fall’s election. War is good for corporate profits and getting McBush elected would be good for continuing corporate profit.

    If truth was relevant to the Corporate News Media, they would be broadcasting that the war in Afganistan has become a miserable failure. All that we have accomplished there is to create a Narco-State!

    If truth was relevant to the Corporate News Media, they would be broadcasting that the ‘surge’ in Iraq has not created political stability or progress – as was the Bush Crime Family’s stated goal of the surge.

    Instead, we continue to get the same cheerleading for the Bush propaganda relating to Iraq & Afganistan that we have had since prior to the invasions.

  • we do not look like the biggest Banana Republic that has ever existed, we are the biggest Banana Republic that has ever existed. And we get a lot of our bananas at the point of a gun. But the Chinese are about to prove that the dollar is mightier than the sword.

    Also would like to underline JoeBob’s point, and add that the casualties we’re seeing now are also being brought down by the nature of the operations being engaged in. I am very sure that the Bushies in the pentagon are doing everything they can to bring the casualty count down for the elections. After that it’ll become apparent what they did and how little it actually changed anything. Until the political problems are seriously solved over there, the fighting will continue.

    But do the American people care, if we’re “only” losing a “small” number of kids to get our hands on the oil we need?

    I’m not sure.

  • We must be winning the war if there’s no explosions on TV…

    Let me check – see, I was right! Here’s a news story from Friday showing the Iraqis partying on the streets with chocolates & flowers:

  • I wonder as when we go into the later stages of summer if we will see a noticable spike in positive stories coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan? I’m expecting to see alot of newly painted schools in Iraq on tv as the election approaches.

  • And it’s not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Tim Russert suddenly passed on, I turned on Wolf Blitzer to see the days’ stories. The entire first hour was devoted to Russert. When they opened the second hour with Russert, I turned of the damned TV. Not one word of the wars, not one word of the massive flooding in the midwest, not one word on the election. Just so-called ‘journalist’ after ‘journalist’ praising, remembering Russert.

    Navel gazing of the highest order (and I have a journalism degree and worked in the field).

  • The news organizations want to broadcast news that they think interests the viewing public. Very few people in the US know someone who is fighting in Iraq or Afganistan. There is no military draft so families are not invested in ending the war. And, once the number of US soldier casualities fell, the interest in the war waned.

    I do not want to say that the American public is completely crass and oblivious to world affairs but I would suspect that the number of Iraqi and Afgan casualities has never really held much interest in people who watch the evening news.

    There are the presidential campaign, sub-prime mortgage crisis, food crisis and now the price of gas to capture everyone’s attention. And whatever Paris Hilton is currently doing. I am not saying that it is right but it is reality.

  • John Farmer said:

    “Navel gazing of the highest order (and I have a journalism degree and worked in the field).”

    If John has a degree in journalism and worked in the field, he has every right to be called a journalist. Timmah ‘ambush’ Russert was a lawyer who never once did anything that could rightfully be labeled as journalism. Timmah was a D.C. insider who perpetuated the ‘D.C. insiders know everything’ mythology of the Corporate News Media. In my kindest moods, I would refer to Russert as a ‘Corporate Pimp’.

  • None of this bears on the fact that nearly zero minutes have been spent covering: Iranian politics, Pakistani politics, Russian politics… We get plenty of Government spin but little information about what is actually happening in these countries (and others) in which current developments will strongly impact our future peace and prosperity and about which we only hear misleading bellicosity. This is the state of affairs which led Americans to be ignorant enough to be were we are now, and it bodes ill for any future decisions we will be asked to make.

    CNN used to devote an hour (Noon – 1) on international news. No longer, it is now “Issue #1” which, to the degree that I have been able to watch it (extremely little, I admit), consists mostly of reporting that gas prices are high and house prices are low (better late than never, I always say). I’m not sure how this is supposed to be different from the other 23 hrs of the day, but the end result is that the little international news that was available is no gone, and one must go to the BBC or PBS to have even a hope of news from beyond our shores.

  • Sad Old Vet (10): And I wonder how much the ‘poll numbers’ are being driven by the lack of coverage by the Corporate News Media?

    It’s a cycle. Like giving a child a glass of warm milk, and then saying, and now you’re getting sleepy, aren’t ya’?

  • They could dig up a scandal a day in Iraq if they went looking for it instead of waiting for Government handouts.

  • We’re still in Afghanistan? Didn’t we hand that off to some UN peacekeeping force years ago?

  • Nice to see that the Powers That Be can indeed learn from history, i.e., the main lesson of Vietnam:

    If it isn’t on TeeVee it isn’t happening.

  • While it is ominous that violence has increased in Afghanistan, it not as bad as this makes it sound, since tidbit also reflects the fact that last month was the least deadly month of the war so far for the American military in Iraq.

    Whenever I experience someone speaking or writing these kinds of words, I want to break things and scream at the author or speaker as loud and long as I possibly can until my eyes bleed.

    BRING. THEM. HOME. NOW.

    And the crashing newspaper circulation, along with dwindling audiences for the “network” newscasts, is all you really need to know about why the war is getting reduced coverage – people are either sick and frakking tired of it, or have selected other sources for information.

  • They don’t mention the soldiers in Korea either. One died there in an auto accident just last week.

    This is what they want to reduce the status of the Iraq occupation to, making it as important as Korea to lessen its impact on the elections. The only thing I hate worse than republicans is the MSM…but then again aren’t they the same thing?

  • Well, really, how could the continual presence of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan compare to stories about pact-making pregnant teenage girls?

  • More than one year ago I wrote to a friend to be extremely cautious about the mood of the American voting public. I used the word “fickle” and cited the “civil rights struggle” of the 70’s as an example of a precipitous collapse when Vietnam heated up. The “interest lifetime” for a major issue such as Iraq is approximately one year. Hence, it is not simply the media that have “massively scaled back” in a sort of vacuum but the public, as always, has preceded and accelerated the development. The high-water mark of anti-war interest occurred after the November elections of 2006. The rot began at the end of 2007, early 2008 when the presidential primaries and caucuses began to intrude and became almost 24/7 news and nonsense. The media sensed the rot immediately hence began to report accordingly.

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