A case study on Washington Post Iraq war Part 1

Below I am republishing a case study I did for a small zine a couple of years ago. It will work as a starting point into media issues which will drive the main subject of this blog. This blog will confront everything from misleading editorials to “news” coverage, as well as other blogs. This will be a multi-part article while I try to keep up with other issues that arise.

Looking back on the week before: A case study on Washington Post Iraq war coverage and placement of information

The Washington Post’s staff makes many editorial decisions about the placement of stories in their coverage. When they place a story on the front page, and another in a middle page, they are saying something about the significance of each story. Common sense, right?

In the pre-war Iraq coverage their decisions were often mind-boggling. For instance, an article on March 13, 2003 entitled, “GOP Uses Remarks to Court Jews; Moran's Comments Cited in New Appeal,” appeared on the front page of the paper. This story appeared three days after Moran made the comments about Jews, and after three days of consecutive coverage of the incident – yet little new information was offered.

On the same day, a story appeared on page A17 entitled, “FBI Probes Fake Evidence of Iraqi Nuclear Plans” which was inarguably more urgent in a country about to go to war with “Fake Evidence” as justification.

The Moran story was only newsworthy because Republicans were able to set the agenda for the news. The article itself charged that this was exactly what the GOP was doing - using Moran’s comments as a political move to court more Jews to support Republicans. The media, however, missed the irony that they were also duped and distracted by a political party with a clear motive – the longer the Moran story was considered newsworthy the less likely other stories would receive as much attention and the more harmful the story would become for a oppositional political figure.

Regardless, the story received front page coverage. Meanwhile, a story about an FBI probe of fake documents that was used by President Bush as evidence of Iraq’s nuclear arsenal was buried in the paper.

On March 15, 2003, two days later, three more articles including, “Moran Gives Up Position in Leadership,” “Jewish Organizations Worried About Backlash for Iraq War; Groups Are Outraged Over Allegations of Warmongering,” and “Questioner Says Moran Should Not Resign,” all appear in The Washington Post. One of the articles once again received front-page coverage. On March 16, 2003, another article on Moran entitled, “Contrite, Combative Moran on the Ropes; Congressman Fights to Survive,” appeared on the front page.

The Washington Post was not out to get Moran, after all, some of these stories had their positive moments. The problem is that the story was consistently on the front page while other stories of much greater urgency were relegated to the back. Worse yet, legitimate concerns and stories relevant to the war were completely ignored, to which we will return later.

If the Bush Administration purposefully mislead the public into a war and used false information to do so, that holds more significance than a senator’s tasteless comments.

The Washington Post made plenty of other questionable decisions. On March 16, 2003, The Washington Post did two stories on the possibilities of a post-war Iraq. However, while the story mentioned above, “Contrite, Combative Moran on the Ropes; Congressman Fights to Survive,” was on the front page of The Washington Post on March 16, 2003, “Stability of Regional Politics Is At Stake in Bid to Topple Hussein” was on Page A13. The buried story took a look at possible outcomes of an Iraq war but managed to never stray outside the accepted bounds of elite political thought. The story examined the possibility of civil war, a populist government who would not want to deal with the U.S. setting an example for other Middle Eastern countries, regional instability, and the possibility of the war encouraging Islamic fundamentalists. Another story on page A13 entitled, “Striking Iraq Could Fuel Further Attacks on U.S.” examined other possibilities including that the war could encourage more extremist groups, help extremist groups recruit members, and turn the international community against the United States. Neither of these stories appeared in the front of the paper, which downplayed their importance and implied that Moran’s political career is more important than the effects of a war with Iraq.

Even the stories that did appear never examined the historical record of previous US involvement in other third world countries like Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, Iran, or even Iraq itself. The stories never examined the United States support of terror, puppet leaders, faked elections, dictatorial governments, military rule, and genocide in these, and other current and former client states. Thus the media failed to present the war in Iraq in any meaningful way, not only failing to break out of the propaganda model, but also failing to present the news in a minimally informative manner.