UPDATED - ColdType

REMEMBERING THE FALLEN
SOME FACTS FROM FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)
AMPLIFYING OFFICIALS,
SQUELCHING DISSENT
uring the Iraq war, the guest lists of
major nightly newscasts were dominated
by government and military officials,
disproportionately favored prowar
voices and marginalized dissenters,
a new study by FAIR has found.
Starting the day after the invasion of Iraq
began, the three-week study covered the most
intense weeks of the war (March 20 to April 9,
2003). It examined 1,617 on-camera sources in
stories about Iraq on six major evening newscasts:
ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening
News, NBC Nightly News, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer
Reports, Fox News Channel’s Special Report with
Brit Hume and PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.
Some key findings:
■ Official voices dominate: 63 percent of all
sources were current or former government
employees. U.S. officials alone accounted for
more than half (52 percent) of all sources.
■ Pro-war chorus: Nearly two thirds of all
sources – 64 percent – were pro-war.
■ Anti-war voices missing: At a time when 27
percent of the U.S. public opposed the war, only
10 percent of all sources, and just 3 percent of
U.S. sources, were anti-war. That means the percentage
of Americans opposing the war was
nearly 10 times higher in the real world than on
237
the news.
■ Sound bytes vs. interviews: When anti-war
guests did make the news, they were mostly relegated
to man-on-the-street sound bytes. Not a
single show did a sit-down interview with a person
identified as being against the war.
■ International perspectives scarce: Only 6
percent of sources came from countries other
than the U.S., Britain or Iraq. Citizens of France,
Germany and Russia – countries most opposed
to war – constituted just 1 percent of all guests.
The six shows’ guest lists had a lot in common,
but there were a few differences. Of U.S. sources,
NBC Nightly News had the smallest percentage
of officials (60 percent) and the largest percentage
of anti-war guests (4 percent), while CBS
Evening News had the highest percentage of officials
(75 percent) and fewest anti-war voices (a
single sound byte from Michael Moore’s Oscar
acceptance speech).
“When independent policy critics and grassroots
voices are shortchanged, democracy is
shortchanged,” said FAIR’s Steve Rendall. “Not
one show offered proportionate coverage of antiwar
sentiment. If media are supposed to foster
vigorous, inclusive debate during national crises,
it’s clear that during the Iraq war, TV news let the
public down.” ●