It's Official! "Iraq Coverage Wasn't Biased"

[reprehensor]

whew, i was gettin' nervous there for a minute

It's Official! "Iraq Coverage Wasn't Biased"

The Irony Ombudsman appears to have taken the day off at most US news outlets as editors have jumped on a story from the AP entitled, "Report: Iraq Coverage Wasn't Biased."

As the notion of an "objective" and "balanced" commercial press in the United States continues to go the way of the Abominable Snowman, the Loch Ness Monster and Iraqi WMD, it is hardly surprising that editors around the country salivate at the sight of a story that appears to confirm the existence of these strange, elusive phenomena (objectivity and balance, not WMD). The irony is that in their desperation to run any remotely positive story about the news media, these editors have exhibited, as they did numerous times over Iraq, an inability to sniff out a fishy story.

The AP story in question was based upon the results of a study produced by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) -- an institute affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism -- and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. For the study, over 2000 news stories from television, newspapers and websites were examined and coded. The particular result of the study that led to the AP headline in question ("Report: Iraq Coverage wasn't Biased") -- a headline carried verbatim by a large number of news outlets -- was that while 25% of all stories on the war on Iraq were "Negative," 20% were "Positive." In general, according to the AP story, the positive and negative stories balanced each other out. Accusations of bias, therefore, were unfounded.

As with most academic research, however, the devil is in the details, and this particular study is no exception. Three examples make the point:

more@link

[Selatius]

1. Well, propaganda has become more efficient from 60 yrs. ago

Instead of the state directly controlling the news media, corporations do instead. It's a more efficient model compared to the corporatism that overtook Italy and Germany before WW2.

[dbeach]

2. Corporate and Entertainment Media{CAEM}

dazzle us with tall tales,millionaire salaries,$500 hair -dos and .05 cent mentality...

Look for more sex stories of the stars when bush gets ready to make Iran or Syria into glass...

[Demeter]

3. Iraq's Coverage Wasn't Coverage!

The totally content-free bullshit that's been filling the papers and airwaves since Reagan has crowded out any factual reporting to the blogs, where the Freepers do their best to bury it under more bullshit. Truth will out. It's just going to take more time than I think we have to spare.