MediaWatch: March 1991
Table of Contents:
The Big Red Baghdad
"There are lots of things that you can't report. If you do, you are asked to leave the country and I don't think we want to do that. I think you do a very valuable service reporting no matter what you are allowed to report." -- Baghdad-based reporter Betsy Aaron on CBS This Morning, February 20.
Aaron's damn-the-content attitude best represented network reporters' reaction to criticism of Baghdad coverage: What they said from Baghdad didn't matter, so long as they were there to say it. CNN's Peter Arnett drew most of the criticism, but to determine the quality of journalism viewers received from the three broadcast networks, MediaWatch analysts viewed every ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News news story originating from Baghdad from February 1 to February 27, the day the Allies ceased offensive action.
After analyzing all 45 stories, MediaWatch determined: 1) The correspondents reported on Iraqi opinion without once suggesting the possibility of opposition to Saddam Hussein. 2) In one-third of the stories, reporters described, without challenge, Iraqi battle claims. 3) The reporters spent more time dismissing concerns about Iraqi censorship than explaining how it might impair the flow of accurate information.
Iraqi Opinion. Reporting on public opinion in a country where disagreement is a crime is tricky business, to say the least. But much like the networks' inaccurate reporting from Eastern Europe and Nicaragua, no reporter ever suggested that Iraqis didn't support Saddam. Out of 34 talking heads, 31 of them (totaling 4 minutes and 16 seconds) struck a defiant pose in support of Saddam and against the Allies. Only three talking heads on ABC, which totaled 17 seconds, were somewhat ambiguous. Instead, they usually offered phrases beginning with "Everyone here told us..." Witness the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, reporting for NBC on February 16: "The people we met blamed the Americans for continuing the war." The people we met? A more honest description would be "the people they allowed us to interview." Bowen went on to claim: "The air war itself, as it goes on, has shown no sign of diminishing Saddam Hussein's support here."
Anti-Saddam sentiment was not a secret. In the February 11 New Republic, journalist Michael Kelly recalled how ABC cameraman Fabrice Moussus was told by a minder from the Ministry of Information: "We do not like this government. I am afraid Iraqis will be killed, but we hope [the allied forces] will hit the government areas and help us get rid of the government."
Only twice did reporters add that Iraqis were receiving limited information, when ABC and CBS reported that Iraqis didn't know the details of the Soviet peace plan. Strangely, that didn't stop repeated reports on CBS and NBC about how Iraqis couldn't understand why Bush continued the bombing when Saddam had accepted the Soviet plan. On February 27, Betsy Aaron described the Iraqis' faith in their leader: "With their city in ruins, what is left on the street is pride...The average citizen is confused by the politics swirling around him. He thinks the Iraqi government has made every concession that it can make for a peace with honor. He believes Iraq is due at least that, and tonight, this [bombing] is what the allies have to say to the Iraqis."
Iraqi Claims. Network reporters forwarded Iraqi claims about civilian or military targets without challenge in 15 reports, or a third of the time. By contrast, reporters challenged Iraqi claims only twice. True to their censors, reporters only aired claims of civilian damage. Only ABC's Bill Blakemore, on February 19, explained the Iraqis wouldn't allow him to see or discuss military targets.
NBC reporters were responsible for ten of the 15 unchallenged reports, or in more than half of their 19 stories. In his first dispatch from Iraq since January, NBC's Tom Aspell reported from a village where the Iraqi government had taken him: "The people [here]...say as many s 80 civilians may have died when the town's main bridge was attacked by Allied war planes last week....The people say there are no military sites in the area....There are some here who think that civilian targets are being bombed simply because the Allied air forces have run out of military targets." On February 18, Aspell presented Iraq's claims as true, and the American claims as dubious: "This morning they showed what's left of the milk factory bombed here weeks ago. The U.S. is still insisting it's a biological weapons plant."
Aspell took over from the BBC's Jeremy Bowen, whose reports were even worse. In reporting the Allied bombing of an "air raid shelter," Bowen repeatedly changed the subject from whether the "shelter" had a military function to the most graphic images of the tragedy. When Tom Brokaw asked about possible military use, Bowen replied: "No, Tom, the only statement I am picking up about that came from Washington. I was down at the bunker again today. I saw more bodies being taken out and more bodies of women and children, lots of small corpses."
Censorship. Reporters downplayed official censorship (six times) more than they mentioned its effect on their reporting (twice). At the site of the "shelter" bombing, NBC's Jeremy Bowen claimed: "We were allowed complete freedom of movement in the dormitory. There were no restrictions," and "None of this was set up for our cameras." At the end of one report, Bowen even claimed "They let us film what we wanted. I've a lot more access there than I might have expected at a similar human tragedy in the West." On February 11, Bill Blakemore reported: "The script process is very normal for war time....there's not been any kind of heavy censorship in my experience so far. It's a fairly easy working understanding we have."
No one offered a better refutation of the networks' Baghdad reporters than the reporters themselves after they were forced to leave on March 6. "The one thing people have to know is that this man, privately, Saddam Hussin, is a hated man," Betsy Aaron told Dan Rather on March 7. On NBC News at Sunrise the next morning, Jeremy Bowen conceded: "The message that came from them very strongly in Baghdad was that they're pretty sick of Saddam Hussein. They don't like the man, they don't like what he's done to their country, and they'd like to be rid of him."
Now that it's over, the networks should wonder: what value did their Baghdad reports have? In retrospect, the information that came out was often one-sided, incorrect, and only furthered misunderstanding. Those who championed the people's right to know mostly provided the people with the opportunity to be misled.
Some of the networks were also sloppy about warning viewers what was censored. While CBS never lacked some kind of warning, ABC and NBC put on seven reports without censorship warnings. An additional 14 stories came without anchor warnings, notifying the viewers only on the screen.
