complacency in war: indexing and the role of the media in the lead up to the invasion of iraq
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A paper I did for my Journalism 464: Media and Politics class on the role of the U.S. media in the lead up to the war in Iraq. By looking at a number of studies done by media analysts and political scientists I conclude that the culture of "indexing" in the media lead to a complacency in the reporting of mainstream media in the lead up to war.Instead of mere conspiracy theories of the media purposefully misleading the public in order to lead them into war the paper finds that the actual culture of journalists, whom cozy up with Washington political elites to get the "good stories," was the major factor in the lead up to war.TRANSCRIPT
Complacency in War: Indexing and the Role of the Media in theLead Up to the Invasion of Iraq
Jack Michael Stephens
Journalism 464Professor TabbMay 18, 2007
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It has now widely been acknowledged by many academics and journalist that
during the lead up to the Iraq war the media became lax in it’s supposed “watch dog role”
in scrutinizing the government in it’s case for war. Because of this many within the
public perceived the war as a just war and even thought that Saddam Hussein had a direct
connection to 9/11.1 Instead of blaming the public for lack of attention to the media and
instead of espousing the (what must be comforting to journalists) idea that the Iraq War
was a journalistic anomaly that can easily be corrected with tighter ethical standards, I
argue that the passivity of the press towards the Bush administration was actually of its
own making and is embedded within the culture of today’s journalism. One of the main
reasons for this passivity has to do with what is called “indexing;” indexing is how
journalists get (and what they perceive as) sources. Journalists
tend to ‘index’ their reporting to the views of the political elite and other
official sources (Bennett, 2003b, 2004). When there is consensus among
the elite sources, the likelihood that journalists will investigate an issue
and push for answers is rather low, with the result that the media agenda is
set by government officials rather than by journalists or editors.2
Because the agenda is set by the government instead of the journalists the media will tend
to give to the public what the elite want the public to be feed. In issues of domestic
policy, sources in the government (as well as non-government elites) tend to disagree on
many issues, yet when it comes to international policy many within the government and
the elite tend to agree with each other much more. This is turn leads to a lack of diverse
1 Steven Kull, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War.” Political Science Quarterly 118, no. 4 (Dec. 2003): 571-572.2 Daniela V. Dimitrova and Jesper Strömbäck, “Mission Accomplished?” International Communication Gazette 67, no. 5 (Oct. 2005): 403.
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opinions in the news (whether it be print, television, or radio). In the case of the lead up
to war many in the media chose to use this standard form of reporting. Coupled with a
lack of drive to actually delve deeper into the issues of the invasion, being spoon-feed
faulty intelligence on Hussein’s government, and presenting a lack of sources to the
public, the news media inadvertently (as well as in some cases intentionally) became a
mouthpiece for the Bush administration in the removal of Hussein from power. In this
paper I will present evidence from previous studies on news organizations here in the
U.S., and abroad, in order to show how indexing indeed was an important factor in the
news media’s “mistakes” in reporting the lead up to war and how it influenced the
public’s opinion to help support the Bush administration’s goals for Hussein’s removal.
First, a quick explanation of indexing. In a study in 1973 Leon Sigal examined
the structures of news organizations that related to how reporters got their information
and their interactions with their sources. “Because reporters cannot witness many events
directly, they ‘must locate themselves to places where information is most likely to flow
to them.’”3 Because of this news organizations embed their reporters in the institutions of
government. So they will have reporters in the Pentagon, the State Department, the
White House, etc. Because of this most of the news organizations concentrate all of their
efforts in the elite political circles of Washington D.C. to get their sources and stories.
“Officials in a liberal democracy typically do not speak with a uniform voice; there are
variations in elite consensus on important policy issues.” With indexing, reporters and
the media tend to cover stories that mirror the debate within elite circles with “whom
3 Steven Livingston and W. Lance Bennet, “Gatkeeping, Indexing, and Live-Event News: Is Technology Altering the Construction of News?” Political Communication 20, no. 4 (Oct./Dec. 2003): 365.
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journalists regard as decisive in the outcomes of the issues in the news.”4 But the danger
with this is that when there tends to be consensus in elite political circles, as was the case
with the invasion of Iraq, the news media tends to become a mouthpiece of the
Washington elite as well as (possibly) being the mouthpiece for official administration
policy. Because news reporters are steeped in a culture and tradition of indexing they
tend to not stray to far from the elites in Washington and in turn lack the drive to delve
deeper into a story and as well as trying to find alternative sources that espouse a
different line than the elites.
More specifically, we can see indexing in its role in the lead up to the Iraq War to
what David L. Altheide and Jennifer N. Grimes calls “War Programming.” War
programming is:
the organization and structure of the discourse of recent reportage about
wars, and not mere content. It encompasses content as well as thematic
emphases on dominant frames. Because the main frame involved the
inevitability of war and U.S. preparation for it, critiques that attempted to
question the propaganda campaign propelling the country toward war
were ignored.5
Because there was a large consensus that war was inevitable among the elites in
Washington many news organizations failed to report (fully and accurately) the
opposition to the lead up to war because they thought it was too late to turn the tides of
war. This obviously leads to a public which is less informed than they should be and
more complacent to the administrations line of thinking. Yet the Society of Professional
4 Livingston, “Gatekeeping, Indexing, and Live-Event News,” 365-366.5 David L. Altheide and Jennifer N. Grimes, “War Programing: The Propaganda Project and the Iraq War.” Sociological Quarterly 46, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 618.
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Journalists code of ethics states that “public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and
the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by
seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of evens and issues.”6 As
we will see further in this paper this idealistic view of the journalist’s role was not
followed by many of the journalists and news organizations whom follow the SPJ code of
ethics and who’s mission is to educate the public in matters of government policy (as
well as other societal issues).
Public opinion is very important for policy makers in their decision to go to war
and in the lead up to war. Because of this many policy makers and elites in the
government need to make their case to the public through the news media since there is
almost no other way for the public to hear their message other wise on a daily bases.
Since the news media has natural organizational filters in how they give the public their
news policy makers have to frame their message in a way in which they know will give
the viewer the most impact of what they want them to hear. An example would be Vice-
President Dick Chenney saying that it’s a “slam dunk” that Hussein has weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) in his possession. The news media, obviously, will repeat that hard-
hitting catch phrase over and over again throughout the day. Instead of focusing on the
entire interview the news media will only focus on that specific comment which will
further enhance the administration’s policy of invasion since an attentive public will hear,
see, and read that phrase over a period of days if not weeks.
We can see with the New York Times and the Washington Post how the
administration’s framing of the war (during the lead up to war), and indexing, affected
6 Jay Black, Bob Steele, and Ralph Barney, eds. Doing Ethics In Journalism: A Handbook with Case Studies (Needham Heights, Massachusetss: Allyn & Bacon, 1994), 6.
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the front page stories for both newspapers. During a two-month period of high support
for the invasion of Iraq the Times and the Post tended to mirror what was said during
White House press briefings. Instead of framing their own news the two papers were
letting the administration frame the news for them. From April to May 2003 the key
phrase words mentioned in the press briefings were WMD, terrorism, coalition, freedom,
and outlaw regime. Freedom was the most mentioned phrase with coalition, terrorism,
and WMD a close second, third and fourth. Consequently the phrases used in the front
page stories for the newspapers mirrored exactly the phrases used in the briefings; with
freedom coming in first, than coalition, terrorism and finally WMD.7 Even during a
period of time of low public support for the war latter on, the two newspapers still
mirrored the administration’s talking points. Unlike earlier in the war the White House
barely mentioned WMD anymore as a rational for war, consequently the WMD story was
barely covered on the front pages of the Times and Post.
The media also relied heavily on government sources within their stories. Of all
of the sources that the Times used, government sources were in 44 percent their articles.
The Times also used anonymous sources in 78 percent of their articles.8 For Time
magazine Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell “were referenced and cited much more
frequently than even the heads of state of key countries, including those in Europe and
the Middle East.”9 While government sources were used heavily in the Times and Time
magazine anti-war voices (from the U.N., NGOs, and activists) Time only used them 5
7 Thomas B. Christie, “Framing Rationale for the Iraq War: The Interaction of Public Support with Mass Media and Public Policy Agendas.” Internaitonal Communication Gazette 68, no. 5/6 (Oct. 2006): 526-527.8 Daniela V. Dimitrova and Jesper Strömbäck, “Mission Accomplished?” International Communication Gazette 67, no. 5 (Oct. 2005): 410.9 Cynthia Boaz. “War and Foreign Policy Framing in International Media.” Peace Review 17, no. 4 (Oct./Dec. 2005): 353.
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percent of the time while using military actors 20 percent of the time.10 The Times only
covered anti-war protests (and articles with a general “negative” tone) 2 percent of the
time.11 Both Time and Newsweek’s coverage in the lead up to the Iraq War was heavily
influenced by the administration with a majority of their stories on Iraq also being framed
within the same context as terrorism and 9/11.
Time’s and Newsweek’s coverage of Iraq policy was framed by the
September 11 context, as well as stories about terrorism in general…the
September 16 cover stories about Iraq were preceded by cover stories
about September 11 and then followed by a Time September 23 cover
about al Qaeda terrorists. Newsweek’s cover in September 23 emphasized
Iraq, with a main title “How We Helped Create Saddam and Can We Fix
Iraq after He’s Gone?” and a large picture of Saddam Hussein’s face
taking up most of the cover. Within the issue, just before the cover story,
was a four-page photo spread focused around September 11
commemorations, including flags, a kneeling police officer at Ground
Zero, flowers, and President Bush’s words from his speech of
commemoration, spread across two pages, “What our enemies have begun,
we will finish.”12
Newsweek also included stories of terrorist threats against the U.S. with stories on
Hussein and Iraq. Time had a cover story on the capture of a terrorist who planed to
wreck havoc on southeast Asia along with a story on patrolling the no-fly zones in Iraq.13
10 Boaz, “War and Foreign Policy Framing,” 353.11 Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 410.12 Amy Fried, “Terrorism as a Context of Coverage before the Iraq War.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 10, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 128.13 Fried, “Terrorism as a Context of Coverage,” 128.
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Yet how did the administration so successfully guide the media to frame the
upcoming Iraq War in the context of terrorism and why would news organizations, which
are supposed to hold government accountable, constantly give such a prominent voice to
government officials in their stories and so little to non-government anti-war sources. As
we have seen above, the role of indexing plays a major role in this. As I will show below
the media did not take an active role in making sure their sources were vetted properly as
well as critiquing statements that came from the government.
Numerous studies have shown that during times of war the media tends to ally
itself with the government and the political elites much more closely than is normal for
the media to do all ready (within the context of indexing).14 Some of this has to do with
the fact that the media is just as much influenced by patriotic and nationalistic feelings as
any other blue-blooded American is and when it comes to issues that are framed in a
national security issue context the media, as with the public, tend to side with the
government. Another factor has to do with how the government frames its argument and
how it feeds its argument to the media. But, the most important factor has to do with a
combination of those factors as well as the overwhelming factor of indexing within the
journalistic world and on relying to much on official sources in the every day
dissemination of the news. The current administration in power can use as much rhetoric
and propaganda as it wants, but if the media performs its watch dog role than the public is
less likely to tow the line of the White House. Yet as Steven Kull has shown us, the
public seemed to believe in every line that was being feed to them by the administration
14 “Students of propaganda (Lippman 1925; Doob 1966; Speier 1969; Lasswell1971; Lasswell, Speier, and Lerner 1979) and American journalism have long noted thatthe press capitulates to the government during time of war (Gerth 1992; Kellner 1992;2003; Shapiro 1992; Jackall 1994; Ellenius and Foundation 1998; Jackall 1999; Der Derian 2002; Herman and Chomsky 2002).” Altheide, “War Programming,” 619.
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despite the fact that allegations of WMDs and links to Al Qaeda were wrong.
Both before and after the war, a substantial portion of Americans have
believed that evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda existed. Before
the war, in the January PIPA/KN poll, 68 percent expressed the belief that
Iraq played an important role in September 11, with 13 percent even
expressing the belief that “conclusive evidence” of Iraq’s involvement had
been found. Asked in June, July, and August-September…large
percentages (45 to 52 percent) said they believed that the United States
had “found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working
closely with the al-Qaeda [sic] terrorist organization.”
…
a striking misperception occurred after the war, when the United States
failed to énd any WMD or even any solid evidence of aWMD program.
PIPA/KN érst asked in May whether respondents thought that the United
States has or has not “found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq,
and 34 percent said the United States had (another 7 percent did not
know). In June, Harris Interactive subsequently asked, “Do you believe
clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction has been found in Iraq or
not?” and 35 percent said that it had.15
Obviously the news media did not do their job in educating the public in the run-up to the
war and during the immediate aftermath of the war.
The administration and its elite allies would constantly frame (in the lead up to the
15 Steven Kull, et. al. “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War.” Political Science Quarterly 118, no. 4 (Dec. 2003): 571-572.
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invasion of Iraq) Hussein and Iraq within the frame of the “War on Terror.” The
administration allowed leaks to occur that framed Hussein and Iraq within the context of
terrorism, specifically Al Qaeda but also with the militant Islamic organizations in
Palestine. Instead of critically challenging their own sources on the accuracy of such
claims many news organizations used those sources (anonymously) in their stories which
in turn were used by the administration to help frame the context for the war in Iraq
(terrorism and WMDs).16
Since Iraq was part of what George W. Bush called the ‘axis of evil’, and
the administration successfully argued that Iraq possessed WMDs and that
the war against Iraq was part of the ‘war on terror’, the responsibility for
the war was perceived as a non-issue. That is, the president and the
administration managed to make the war in Iraq appear congruent with the
‘war on terror’. And, as Entman writes, ‘When an event or issue is clearly
congruent in this way, it becomes relatively easy for presidents to frame it
so that most participants think alike’ (Entman, 2004: 148).17
This further helped the administration make its case to the public. Because, as we have
seen above, the sources used by most major newspapers and magazines used
administration and military officials the journalists covering the war had less of a critical
eye than they should have on the president’s framing of the Iraq War within the context
of terrorism.
The administration also used a certain tactic to help their war policies along. The
tactic in question, called by retired Air Force colonel Sam Gardiner, was the “excluded
16 Altheide, “War Programming,” 626-627.17 Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 411-412.
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middle.” That is, when people are given shoddy and incomplete information they will
draw false connections due to suggestive statements.18
Throughout the summer of 2003, Gardiner documented incidents that he
saw as information-warfare campaigns directed both at targeted foreign
populations and the American public. By the fall, he had collected his
analysis into a lengthy treatise, called "Truth from These Podia," which
concluded that "the war was handled like a political campaign," in which
the emphasis was not on the truth but on the message.19
And yet because of the way the news media sets up how they get their stories and where
they get their sources they were complicit in the administration’s attempt to influence the
media. Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor state:
Censorship and propaganda exist in the news media and come in many
flavors – using unnamed sources in national security stories; using the
same elite-level sources repeatedly; ‘killing’ a story before it comes to
light; and encouraging self-censorship on the part of working reporters.
Although they will rarely admit to it, news organizations are often willing
colluders with governments and militaries in efforts to censor because
major media owners are members of the political elite themselves and
therefore share similar goals and outcomes.20
Looking back at the utter disregard for challenging the administration’s, in what is now
18 Daniel Shulman, “Mind Games.” Columbia Journalism Review 45, no. 1 (May/June 2006), available on EbscoHost Academic Search Premier (accessed May 13, 2007).19 Shulman, “Mind Games.”20 Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor. “The Revival of the Propaganda State: US Propaganda at Home and Abroad since 9/11.” International Communication Gazette 68, no. 5/6 (Oct. 2006): 396.
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known, false propaganda Michael Massing, in a 2004 New York Review of Books article
wrote, “‘the Iraq saga should cause journalists to examine the breadth of their sources,’
and wondered whether journalists were too dependent on high-level officials instead
of cultivating lower-ranking people within government bureaucracies.”21 It’s also easy to
see the consequences of the journalistic policies of the press in its mission to the public
and how it reflects on their journalistic standards.
In a poll done in the late 1990s comparing Swedish and American journalists 58
percent of Swedish journalists said that objectivity meant “‘going beyond the statements
of the contending sides to the hard facts of a political dispute’” while only 28 percent of
American journalists thought that’s what objectivity meant.22 Clearly, for journalists in
the U.S. objectivity means quoting and giving equal time to certain political elites in and
around Washington D.C. Yet, as we have seen above, when there are no clear
contradictory statements among the political elite than many journalists do not pursue
opposite views outside of the Beltway and instead give the public a one sided view of a
story that can potentially have more than two sides. This also shows that journalists are
more concerned with getting different views of political elites and less concerned in
actually delving into a story and trying to dig up facts that are important to the issue at
hand.
With the Iraq war delving deeper meant holding a healthy skepticism of
administration pronouncements and not relying on indexing as the sole key to
disseminating the news. Journalists should have sought outside sources and should have
seriously engaged ambassadors from other countries around the world and brought their
21 Oliver Boyd-Barrett, “Judith Miller, The New York Times, and the Propaganda Model.” Journalism Studies 5, no. 4 (Nov. 2004): 440.22 Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 403.
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voices into the discussion instead of relying more on administration officials such as
Powell and Rumsfeld.
Lance Bennett (2003a) observed that the US press exhibited high levels of
complicity with the government in regard to the 2003 Iraq War, discussing
10 factors that ‘created a perfect propaganda storm’ in US media. Notably,
the US media ignored the world opposition to the war in a generally
ethnocentric and patriotic storytelling (Bennett, 2003a). Dimitrova et al.
(2005) offer one of the few comparative studies of the coverage of the
2003 Iraq War. They found significant differences in war framing between
US and international news websites. Foreign sites were more likely to
include the responsibility frame, for instance, while the American sites
were more likely to focus on military conflict (Dimitrova et al., 2005). In
addition, US news reporters included more media self-references than
foreign journalists.23
The constant framing of terrorism and Iraq by the administration and the uncritical
compliance in passing on this information to the public by the news media caused many
in the public to side with the administration in their argument that Hussein had to be
taken out due to his connections with terrorists. Magazines such as Time and Newsweek
that constantly framed Iraq within the context of terrorism and using flashy graphics with
Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and the Twin Towers in them continued to feed the fear of
the public about issues of terrorism. Seeing pictures of Hussein along with bin Laden and
the events of 9/11 helped further concretize in the minds of many that Hussein was
23 Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 407.
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somehow connected to Al Qaeda.24
Dimitrova and Strömbäck explain:
The media thus seem to ‘blind’ the audience to alternative interpretations
of events and imply national consensus on issues by not offering opposing
views. In theoretical terms, this means that one-sided coverage might
function as ‘consensus heuristic’, which means that information regarding
a certain issue may function as a clue to which viewpoints are valid or
acceptable. As explained by Mutz (1998: 210): ‘When media emphasize
who or which side of an issue or controversy is ahead or behind, they may
inadvertently cue the consensus heuristic, thus altering attitudes toward a
candidate or issue.’ By doing this, the media might also trigger a ‘spiral of
silence’ (Noelle-Neumann, 1984), deliberately or not.25
Of course, there are alternative explanations. Some of these come from Kull in his 2003
paper on the public’s misperception of the administration’s statements on Iraq. One of
these being that the administration continually would mention 9/11, terrorism, Al Qaeda,
and Hussein in the same speeches and talking points across the country and these in turn
would be viewed, heard, and read by the public. In a letter to Congress Bush stated, “the
necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including
those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Nothing in this sentence
mentions Iraq, yet the letter to Congress was a justification for a war against Iraq.
Cheney also made statements about Al Qaeda officials meeting with Iraqi intelligence
24 Fried, “Terrorism as a Context of Coverage before the Iraq War.”25 Dimitrova, “Mission Accomplished?” 413.
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officers as well as equating Iraq with being a safe haven for terrorists.26 Yet this
explanation ignores the news media’s role as watch dog. If the media had been doing its
stated function than it would have sought out sources, such as low level bureaucrats and
sources outside the Washington elite, in order to contradict and critique the
administration’s argument that Iraq had WMD and had ties to Al Qaeda. In seeking out
these sources many in the news media could have seen through the administration’s
propaganda and in turn could have filtered out the rhetoric of the administration with
level-headed analysis of its own. Instead of allowing the White House to frame the
debate the media in turn could have framed the debate itself by actually “seeking out
truth and reporting it.”27
Another explanation from Kull is:
The seemingly obvious explanation—that the problem is that people just
do not pay enough attention to the news—does not hold up. As discussed,
higher levels of attention to news did not reduce the likelihood of
misperception, and in the case of those who primarily got their news from
Fox News, misperceptions increased with greater attention.28
So obviously it’s not the fault of the public that they had misperceived the facts about
Iraq so badly. And, as stated above, if the press had done it’s job it could have actively
shielded the public from false information by giving greater voice to dissenters within the
government as well as giving voice to those outside the Beltway.
It is the culture of the newsroom that drives journalists to only seek sources within
elite government circles, especially if a journalist has been mingling within those circles
26 Kull, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War,” 591.27 Jay Black, Doing Ethics In Journalism, 6.28 Kull, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War,” 594.
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for many years (such as Bob Woodward). Journalists need to actively enforce changes
within their newsrooms and seek out alternative viewpoints and not go after the major
“headliners” in order to propel their stories along. Journalists need to change their
mindset on what is a “credible source” and what a “beat” actually is. Only with this can
we divert another information “blackout” (within the mainstream news media) that
occurred during the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
Bibliography
Altheide, David L. “War Programming: The Propaganda Project and the Iraq War.” Sociological Quarterly 46, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 617-643.
Black, Jay and Bob Steele, and Ralph Barney, eds. Doing Ethics In Journalism: A Handbook with Case Studies. Needham Heights, Massachusetss: Allyn & Bacon, 1994.
Boaz, Cynthia. “War and Foreign Policy Framing in International Media.” Peace Review 17, no. 4 (Oct./Dec. 2005): 349-356.
Boyd-Barrett, Oliver. “Judith Miller, The New York Times, and the Propaganda Model.” Journalism Studies 5, no. 4 (Nov. 2004): 435-449.
Stephens 17
Christie, Thomas B. “Framing Rationale for the Iraq War: The Interaction of Public Support with Mass Media and Public Policy Agendas.” International Communication Gazette 68, no. 5/6 (Oct. 2006): 519-532.
Dimitrova, Daniela V. and Jesper Strömbäck. “Mission Accomplished?” International Communication Gazette 67, no. 5 (Oct. 2005): 399-417.
Fried, Amy. “Terrorism as a Context of Coverage before the Iraq War.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 10, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 125-132.
Kull, Steven, et. al. “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War.” Political Science Quarterly 118, no. 4 (Dec. 2003): 569-598.
Livingston, Steven and W. Lance Bennet. “Gatekeeping, Indexing, and Live-Event News: Is Technology Altering the Construction of News?” Political Communication 20, no. 4 (Oct./Dec. 2003): 363-380.
Schulman, Daniel. “Mind Games.” Columbia Journalism Review 45, no. 1 (May/June 2006): 38-49.
Snow, Nancy and Philip M. Taylor. “The Revival of the Propaganda State: US Propaganda at Home and Abroad since 9/11.” International Communication Gazette 68, no. 5/6 (Oct. 2006): 389-407.