US Television Overstepping the Patriotic Mark?

NEW YORK, 27 March 2003 — With journalists at the front lines using “we” to refer to US troops advancing toward Baghdad, US television networks face accusations of twisted ethics as they wear their patriotism on their sleeve.

Twenty-four hour news channel MSNBC, jointly owned by NBC and Microsoft, regularly closes segments with images of soldiers under a setting sun, helicopters in flight and the US flag fluttering in the breeze which then fade to a black screen with the phrase “Our hearts go with them” emblazoned in white.

Sister network CNBC runs a similar sequence concluding with the banner “Wishing our troops a safe return home,” while presenters and reporters for the conservative Fox News offer their support to the troops and their cause in the plainest of terms. On the four main broadcast networks, seen by the majority of Americans, images of civilians or injured Iraqis are few and far between. Instead, repeated footage of GIs in training or during the first few days of the invasion share a split screen with a correspondent in combat gear.

Since the capture of the first US prisoners by Iraqi forces, interviews with their families have flooded the networks while presenters’ choice of phrase allow their patriotism to shine through.

“They consider themselves to be an American news organisation covering a war that America is involved in,” explained Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press at Harvard University.

“They have made the calculation that they want to make this kind of demonstration of support for America on this, despite any kind of journalistic cost,” she said.

For Geneva Overholser, a journalism professor at Missouri University, the US media and especially the television networks have overstepped the mark.

“This goes right at the heart of our credibility. We are supposed to present the facts fairly and without favoritism. It’s not benign. It has a real cost. If we think that the press is supposed to be fair and balanced, then does that cease to be true during war time?” she asked. “I think not. They think that in doing so they will win approval, but they will win it at the cost of thumbing their noses at an important journalistic principle, which is we’re not supposed to be espousing any viewpoint,” she said. In a recent editorial, New York Times journalist Sheryl McCarthy wrote: “The network news shows aren’t covering the war, they’re promoting it. Their message is that the United States is powerful and righteous, that we’re prepared to give Saddam a good whipping, and that everybody who opposes us is a suspect.”