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This book analyses British news media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It describes the analytical framework that serves as the basis for theoretically informed and systematic analysis of wartime media performance. The book synthesises a range of models, hypotheses and explanatory variables to set out a framework composed of three models of news media performance: the elite-driven model, the independent model and the oppositional model. It provides three case studies which, in different ways, illuminate each model of news media performance in wartime. The three case studies include the case of Jessica Lynch, the case of Ali Abbas and the case of the anti-war movement. The book then presents an account of how the relationship between foreign policy, news media and war might be expected to operate, based on current theoretical understanding. In order to place British coverage of the invasion in context, the book offers brief summaries of the structure and character of Britain's television news services and its press. The book provides an analysis of the ways in which the news media's visual depictions of the war reinforced supportive coverage. It is devoted to documenting and analysing evidence for negotiated and oppositional coverage. The book also examines the representation of civilian casualties, military casualties and humanitarian operations across both television and press, three subject areas that generated a good deal of media criticism.
6 ‘Independence, diversity and professional autonomy’: Evidence for negotiated and oppositional coverage Overview This chapter is devoted to documenting and analysing evidence for negotiated and oppositional coverage. This is done in three ways: first, by examining critical coverage that emerged across specific subject areas; second, by describing patterns of coverage in particular media outlets; and third, by presenting time series data. The chapter begins by examining the representation of civilian casualties, military casualties and humanitarian operations
legitimacy of US foreign policy, but such doubts are rarely aired within mainstream media. Finally, supportive coverage tends to play down or ignore the bloody reality of war, with few images of civilian and military casualties reaching the news (Morrison, 1992: 68). In sum, the essence of supportive reporting of war is patriotic, giving support to the military campaign and viewing it from the perspective of ‘our’ soldiers. Criticism of government and military is minimal, with little attention given to wider political and historical contexts and few images of death
October 2003) when the options were posed this way: “Do you think the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there, even if that means continued US military casualties, or, do you think the United States should withdraw its military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further US military casualties, even if that means civil order is not restored there?” But in
Oppositional model Sky, ITV, BBC Sun, Mail, Times, Telegraph Battle, justifications for war (esp. humanitarian) Channel 4 Mirror, Independent, Guardian Civilian casualties, military casualties, humanitarian operations, law and order Ali Abbas Mirror, Independent, Guardian Civilian casualties, military casualties, humanitarian operations, law and order Ali Abbas Jessica Lynch, anti-war movement Jessica Lynch case study provides an ‘ideal type’ example of the propensity of news media to champion ‘good news’ stories from the battlefront; moreover, it highlights the
seventy-four Berkshire parishes and offers the conclusion that pits were constructed for military casualties either on the field of conflict or possibly beyond the local parish churchyard.34 Other garrisons such as Banbury clearly record the burial of soldiers in the churchyard during the outbreaks of plague over the civilwar period. Fifty-eight soldiers were recorded in the burial registers as part of the overall total of 225 interments in the parish churchyard during the 1644 plague epidemic. The pre-war annual mortality rate for the parish was between thirty to
Cold War took place in quite new circumstances. As characterised by Rupert Smith, these new operations could hardly have been more different. They were, he says, subject to shifting political objectives, conducted ‘amongst the people’, they created timeless commitments, required improvised weapons and organisation, were fought against non-state organisations, and were greatly constrained by the notion that the force ‘must be preserved’. Not least, he points out, there was little appetite for tolerating military
dedicatory space for Italians who had died in the First World War. The park later became a place to remember the fallen more broadly; its monuments commemorate military casualties that range from the nineteenth-century Risorgimento to the twenty-first century war in Iraq. 1 Five years after its inauguration, the park became home to its first healthcare-related facility, the Colonia Marchiafava, named for
Spanish Medical Aid Committee in London, many nurses transferred to medical units of the International Brigades, and were soon incorporated in the Spanish Republican Army.9 In addition to military casualties, including prisoners from Franco’s forces, at times they also cared for civilians, usually the victims of bombardments. Their work in Spain was wide ranging. At the height of battle, a theatre nurse might work for thirty-six hours at a stretch or face a constant stream of almost impossible choices in triage. In the wards, nurses gave intravenous injections by the
, & that thro this means, the 19th Century was to soar far above any preceding it’, wrote Foster in 1805 of Greece and Turkey, ‘but they have had a miserable crash, & shewn themselves & us that we are just what our ancestors were before us.’ Foster, having repudiated all belief in the perfectibility of man, went on to agree with Malthus ‘that Crimes & Wars are absolutely necessary, to the human species, to prevent their too great increase’. Warlike states, Foster continued, would always be the most virtuous because they shed their excess population in military casualties