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EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
RTL. The German network also made less of a
switch toward more positively-toned coverage,
as the military success of the American operation
became apparent. In the discussion on
whether or not the war was justified, ARD and
ZDF ignored the fact that Anglo-Saxon experts
on international law did not agree with their
German colleagues. ARD in particular focused
its coverage heavily on anti-war protests. ZDF
led in reporting on the issue of the allies ignoring
popular will worldwide.
On the other hand, the topic ‘Dictatorship in
Iraq’ only played a noticeable role in the Heute
Journal. The question whether the intervention
would result in liberating Iraq was practically
left out of the coverage in the first two weeks of
war.
With the benefit of hindsight: did German TV
journalists do a better job than their American
colleagues? Editors and executives of German
TV stations think so: “Better than during the
first gulf war in 1991,” this is how representatives
of ARD, ZDF and RTL assessed their coverage of
the war in Iraq in the German financial paper
Handelsblatt on April 11th.
‘Better’ does not necessarily mean good, however;
nor even good enough. The analysis of
German TV news coverage on the war in Iraq
reveals the basic journalistic decisions that were
taken: Which issues were important to them in
international comparisons, and how they chose
to describe the situation.
For the German media, the war was a megaevent
that was given more coverage that the catastrophic
Elbe flood of the past summer, a major
story in Germany. Almost two thirds of the news
coverage broadcast during the first week of the
war dealt with Iraq, and this does not even take
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into account a large number of special news specials.
By the end of March the exceeded that on
the Kosovo war in 1999.
In comparison, in the last week before the 2002
German parliamentary elections, the latter
received only half as much attention as the war
in its first week. The leader in the ranking was
private broadcaster RTL Aktuell, which had
practically eliminated all non-war reporting – a
marked difference from how it covered the
Kosovo conflict. The dominance of this issue cannot
be explained solely in terms of its relevance.
First: The war did not come as a surprise: Failing
diplomacy in Washington, Paris and Berlin as
well as the poker game played in Baghdad made
it seem inevitable for months. The German federal
government’s loudly announced goal to
prevent the war at the eleventh hour was at best
an indication of the unrealistic assessment of its
negotiating power.
Second: German soldiers were not involved,
they did not fight or die in Iraq. It is true that
German interests were at stake in regard to
global security and oil. But those key topics were
missing from discussion.
Third: Facts from the news front were in short
supply, for reasons mentioned above.
Fourth: ‘Solidarity with the suffering Iraqis’ as
a reason for the strong media interest would be
little more than hypocrisy, at least when taking
Chechnya into account; and also, in retrospect,
from the Iraqi perspective, whose suffering
under the dictatorship was always of marginal
importance to the German news media.
Fifth: Outlawing war might have been a noble
goal in and of itself. But that was rarely analyzed
along with what the intervention might mean for
future wars and threats. US arguments pointing