Grading TV's War News
Table of Contents:
- Grading TV's War News
- Introduction and ABC
- CBS
- NBC/MSNBC
- CNN
- Fox News Channel
- The Baghdad Reporters
- Embedded Reporters
The Baghdad Reporters
After CNN’s Nic Robertson and his crew were expelled from Baghdad on March 21, none of the U.S. networks had their own full-time correspondents in the Iraqi capital until CBS’s Lara Logan arrived on April 4. But the networks developed associations with other journalists to continue reporting: National Geographic’s Peter Arnett filed reports for NBC and MSNBC; ABC used freelancer Richard Engel; CBS talked to New York Times reporter John Burns by phone; while CNN and FNC interviewed a variety of English-speaking journalists from European media outlets.
For all the risk to journalists who holed up in the Palestine
Hotel during the war, little valuable reporting came out of Baghdad
before U.S. forces arrived. Until the dictatorship ran away April 9,
reporters were under the control of the Iraqi Ministry of Information.
They could not witness very much from the confines of their hotel. They
could not visit damaged government buildings unless the Iraqis took
them there, nor could they dare report anything that would seriously
offend the Iraqi government. All they could do was repeat the dubious
claims of Iraqi officials, visit bomb sites that the Iraqis claimed
illustrated civilian damage, and narrate the nightly bombing of Baghdad.
Given those impediments to accurate reporting, the networks should have used reports from these correspondents sparingly, and emphasized for the audience the difficulties these reporters faced. But ABC instead chose to highlight the stories of civilian suffering which Engel reported, even though it could not be known whether a bandaged person shown in a hospital bed had been hurt or killed by U.S. bombs, Iraqi anti-aircraft fire falling back to the ground, or even an ordinary accident in a city of five million.
Anchor Peter Jennings actually provided the first casualty report which ABC admitted it could not validate. On March 20, less than 24 hours after the war began, Jennings showed his World News Tonight audience video of a young girl in a hospital bed: “We have been getting some video in from Baghdad at the moment, from both al Arabiya, which is a new television cable satellite network in the Middle East, funded in Saudi Arabia....and al Jazeera, which is owned by the Qataris....We cannot tell you what these pictures represent, except some poor child has been hurt. We do not know how, but they are reporting tonight that 37 people have been injured in the course of attacks on Baghdad today and that is all we can tell you. It’s a little out of context, but there it is.”
ABC highlighted Engel’s reports of Iraqi suffering allegedly caused by the U.S. military, and of Iraqi anger towards America. On the March 28 World News Tonight, he reported that “witnesses say a missile exploded in this poor Baghdad neighborhood. It was packed with people shopping this evening. All those killed have been described as civilians. The Iraqi news agency called the missile strikes ‘a new American crime.’” Engel concluded: “Iraqis didn’t expect this war to be without casualties, but they had faith in American technology and its ability to strike with accuracy. In fact, they’re still convinced Americans have that ability, which is leading some people here to start believing the government’s propaganda that coalition forces are deliberately trying to kill civilians.”
On the April 2 World News Tonight, Engel
highlighted the claim that the U.S. had bombed a “maternity hospital.”
He asserted: “Iraqis are growing increasingly enraged by the mounting
damage to civilian sites — including this maternity hospital.” After
the obligatory video of an injured child, Engel went to the streets to
gather public opinion: “I asked this man if he thinks the war is about
liberating him from Saddam’s brutal regime. ‘Liberation?’ he asked me.
‘Who asked for America to liberate us?’”
The next night, Engel reported how the power was out in Baghdad: “It surely must add to the tremendous stress people here are already feeling. This woman had a Caesarian section today just before the blackout. Her baby was a month premature. She told me that when the bombs started dropping this morning, she became terrified and immediately went into labor. The doctor said if she didn’t have a C-section, she’d lose her daughter.” Engel then quoted the Iraqi doctor: “There is an increase in the incidence of premature labors, high increase in the incidence, and there is increase in the incidence of stillbirth in our hospital.” Of course, neither Engel nor anyone who worked for ABC could confirm any of these stories.
But when the Iraqis were liberated six days later, Engel was liberated, too. On the April 9 World News Tonight, the reporter showed his conversation with a U.S. Marine, who asked Engel, “Do you feel safer now that we’re here?” Engel smiled and nodded, “I certainly, I certainly do.”
Yet less than 48 hours after Iraqis toppled the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad — and before U.S. forces had even managed to take full control of the city — Engel decided that chaos in the city meant “time may be running out” for the Americans. “There is a growing sense of disillusionment,” Engel contended since “Iraqis wanted U.S. troops to bring them freedom and security.” His report that night only featured Iraqis discontented with the U.S., including a man who charged: “Now we know that America came to occupy us. They came to steal our oil and our riches and then to leave.”
Because ABC was so accepting of his reports, Engel might have
been more useful to the Iraqi cause than any of the other
correspondents, but National Geographic Explorer’s Peter
Arnett, who was heavily used by MSNBC and NBC during the first week of
the war, was the most outrageously biased Baghdad reporter. Arnett
appeared on Iraqi state television March 30 and bragged about the
usefulness of his reports to those who would halt the U.S. effort to
topple Saddam: “Within the United States, there is growing challenge to
President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the
war. So our reports about civilian casualties here...help those who
oppose the war.” He then praised the “determination” of Iraq’s army,
declared the U.S. war plan a “failure” and arrogantly proclaimed that
he had warned the Bush administration that Iraq wouldn’t be a pushover.
For that, NBC and MSNBC correctly decided to cease using Arnett’s reports, and National Geographic Explorer fired him. But while the networks distanced themselves from the propaganda Arnett spouted on Iraqi state television, they seemed untroubled by the pro-Iraqi propaganda he spouted on MSNBC and NBC, as Arnett parroted the false claims of Iraqi officials without a trace of professional skepticism.
On the Today show on March 26, he told Matt Lauer a horrifying — and false — story about the U.S. using cluster bombs on civilian targets in Baghdad: “We traveled down a wide road, and we got to the scene, and shops on both sides of this highway had been destroyed, Matt, and there was smoldering, 20 or so smoldering vehicles in the street. Residents said that 11 o’clock this morning, local time, two missiles came in, exploded, and the first journalists there earlier said they counted 15 corpses. It was smoldering on the road. We saw body parts being handed around by people and it was, later the Information Minister, Mr. al-Sahaf, complained that the U.S. has started using cluster bombs in the Baghdad area.”
An hour later, Arnett dutifully repeated the Information Minister’s claim about “cluster bombs,” again without any skepticism or doubt. NBC finally summoned its Pentagon correspondent, Jim Miklaszewski, who told Today’s audience the claim was highly doubtful, that cluster bombs are normally used against troops in the field, not urban areas. Miklaszewksi explained: “It would be very unusual if, in fact, cluster bombs were used inside Baghdad. And if you look at pictures...a cluster bomb would create a Swiss-cheese effect, thousands and thousands of holes in the target, and we don’t see that.”
In stark contrast to Arnett’s approach, CBS’s Dan Rather interviewed by telephone the Times’s Burns that night for a report on the exact same incident. Burns did his best to expose the Iraqi propaganda component of the story: “When we are taken to these incidents, and this is by far the worst of them that we’ve seen, there’s a sort of Greek chorus, quite expectedly, led by what appear to be Ba’ath Party officials in uniform waving Kalashnikov rifles and pistols, joined by local residents singing the praises of Saddam Hussein. But as we moved amongst the crowd, the remarkable thing to me was that the people there showed absolutely no hostility to this large group of Western reporters. And when they asked us where we came from, the response was, ‘Good, good,’ and they shook our hands. Now, this could only mean that they make a distinction between governments and people. It could mean something else.”
Rather asked whether Burns could say whether or not Saddam was losing control. “In some respects, the [component of the] government...that delivers services to people has largely disappeared, and yet the control of the government over the people toward the security apparatus remains just about absolute. There is still a tremendous unwillingness on the part of ordinary Iraqis to challenge verbally, or in any other way, the authority of this government. And I think that tells us a great deal about the kind of government which has been here.”
CBS’s own reporter, Lara Logan, made it back to Baghdad just before Saddam’s final collapse. Unlike Burns, she reported Iraqi propaganda ploys at face value. On the April 5 Saturday Early Show, Logan told viewers about some dubious videotape that was released a day earlier, purportedly showing Saddam walking on a Baghdad street amid Iraqi citizens. She speculated that the sight of a living Saddam would put joy into Iraqi hearts: “And people here have been buoyed by the sight of Saddam Hussein on Iraqi television last night, greeting with, greeting people in a residential area of Baghdad.”
Four days later, after his regime had collapsed, Iraqis gathered in the streets to denounce Saddam and pound his likeness with the soles of their shoes.
