At our present time, I don’t think there’s any question that the media in the United States bought the official, Washington line on the war when it started in 2003. In fear of alienating themselves from the main source of information and intelligence on the ground, newspapers and television stations across the country largely took whatever the White House or the military said without question. But I also don’t think there’s any question that as the war progressed, so did the coverage.
The popularity of the president, as well as the war, began to decline, and so followed the media. This situation begs a few questions: Does the media follow positions of the government, or popular opinion? After 9/11, it’s safe to say most Americans were unified patriotically to defeat whoever committed the attack. And though it can and has been argued that it was the media’s duty to highlight why the war in Iraq was not actually the war on those who committed 9/11, it’s unclear whether the actual path the media took was because it fell in line with the government or the people.
Beyond simple criticism, it remains important to ask the why questions: Why did the media fail to cover the Iraq War fairly and accurately at the beginning? Why did it’s approach change? And why did - as the Columbia Journalism Review articles point out - journalists take the heat? Reporting on the Iraq War exemplifies the many challenges and obstacles American journalism faces, most notably the reliance on “official sources” and limited abilities to witness first-hand action on the ground. In “The reign of the CPA,” Columbia Journalism Review (Nov./Dec. 2006), journalists talked about the tension between personal safety and getting real, accurate information. It was a Catch-22: Stay in the green zone, protected by American troops, but be fed the official line, which didn’t reflect what was actually happening; or question the authorities and travel outside the green zone to get the real story, risking loss of life (even by American fire) and loss of sources. As unfair as it is to blame U.S. troops in Iraq, risking their lives, for the problems on the ground, the same can be said for embed journalists at the time. They, too, risked their lives - not for freedom, but freedom of information - and I find it hard to believe many of them would have taken the assignment if they weren’t interested in actually telling the real story.