Bush becomes the focus of media's unsparing eye
The images coming out of Iraq have been frank and brutal in the past few weeks — from the faces of the U.S. war dead and the caskets in which they are buried, to photos of sadistic prison scenes played out in newspapers and on the air.
Bad news everywhere for Bush?: As things go badly in Iraq, the media are scrutinizing the president's every move.
By Paul J. Richards, AFP
In the wake of intense publicity over new books critical of Bush, increased U.S. deaths in Fallujah and the uproar over the scandal involving Iraqi prisoners, experts predict coverage will continue to focus on this administration's misses, not hits. This could set off renewed animosity between an administration known for secrecy and the media that have chafed under it.
"You've got so many different questions on so many different fronts, all in an environment where the U.S. is supposed to turn over power in a few weeks and all of it coming off the deadliest month since the war began," says George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC's This Week. "There would be something wrong if it weren't getting this much coverage."
"The prisoner-abuse story reinforces the perception by some people that the administration doesn't have the situation in Iraq under control," says Susan Page, USA TODAY's Washington bureau chief. "That means this particular incident gets more coverage than it would otherwise, and it means it has more impact, too."
That has prompted the Bush administration to go into damage control, with Bush himself talking to Arab TV to condemn the abuses, "a highly unusual move. It says something about how serious they take it," says Fox News' Kevin Magee.
Friday, embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed anxious to deflect upcoming negative media coverage by disclosing to a congressional panel that there's more to the prison story than still photos show: Video of the prisoners is out there. Rest assured, television producers the world over are now trying to get their hands on that video.
The sheer volume of news is driving intense media coverage, says Jeff Fager, producer of CBS' 60 Minutes II, which broke the abuse story. "I don't know if the press coverage is getting more critical. I think there are more critical stories to cover."
But some pack journalism may be at work, says Geneva Overholser, a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism's Washington bureau. "Just as the herd followed one another in times of little skepticism (during the war), so it happens that, once the questioning begins, others also take up the questioning."
"What happens is journalists get a whiff of blood in the water," says Columbia journalism professor Todd Gitlin. "A wounded president — Reagan over Iran-Contra, Bush over Iraq — is suddenly fair game, they think. The previously hesitant pack at last finds courage in numbers."
A Gallup poll taken just as the prisoner story was coming to light found that 55% of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of the war, up from 48% three weeks ago. An Associated Press poll shows that support for Bush's foreign policy is at 50%, down from 55% a month ago.
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says a president's poll numbers can affect media coverage. "When a president is popular, there's a tendency to describe events describing his popularity. When the numbers are falling, you use that as a lens to explain why his popularity is diminishing."
But Tim Russert, NBC's Washington bureau chief and host of Meet the Press, says, "We try not to let polls sway our coverage and do our best to be fair and objective. It would be a disaster for our business if every time a president's polls were down we declared open season on him."
During the war, a content analysis of network evening newscasts by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that among interviews with ordinary people — not experts or political partisans — 53% supported Bush, 47% didn't. In the next six months, that changed to 69% negative; during the recent 9/11 hearings, fully 96% of comments were negative.
"We're in a bad-news cycle now where bad news builds on itself," says center director Robert Lichter. "Bush's press has gone from bad to worse, from critical to adversarial. The media opposition has gone from passive to active."
Not all the recent coverage has been negative. Just as the media made a hero out of Pvt. Jessica Lynch during the war, so too have they focused on Thomas Hamill, the hostage who escaped his Iraqi captors last week. NBC's Today featured exclusive coverage of his wife flying by private jet to see him in Germany, and news organizations followed Hamill back to his home in Mississippi this weekend.
"It's an effort to balance things out," says Horace Newcomb, who heads the Peabody journalism awards. News executives "look for ways to even things out."
And the media have shown some willingness to cooperate with the administration. 60 Minutes II held the abuse story for two weeks at the request of the Army's Chief of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, who cited concerns for the safety of American hostages and tension in Fallujah. "They were telling us lives were in danger, could we please hold off — and it was a plea from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That's not something that happens every day," Fager says.
Whether the media will be as forbearing in the future remains to be seen.
Terrence Smith, media correspondent for PBS' NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, says the pendulum swung toward "cautious coverage" from 9/11 until Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" last May. Now, Smith says, the pendulum has swung back. "It's reasonable for a lot of questions to be asked. We are hoisted on our own rhetoric as a nation and trying to resolve it."
With a presidential campaign in full swing, none of this will die down anytime soon. "It's going to be a long, hot summer," says Stephanopoulos, who once helped Bill Clinton get elected. "The hotter it gets in Baghdad, the hotter it will get in D.C."
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