LONDON — British broadcasters often favored the government's view on the
Iraq war and provided a sanitized picture of violence by not showing
their grisliest images, according to a study commissioned by the British
Broadcasting Corp. released Thursday.
While many critics accused the BBC of an anti-war bias, the study by
journalism professor Justin Lewis found that it and most other British
TV outlets gave greater weight to official comments than to skeptical
ones.
Lewis concluded there was no indication that journalists "embedded" with
U.S. and British forces had a pro-military slant. Most were clearly
working to protect their objectivity and "on key issues, were
demonstrably able to do so," he wrote in The Guardian newspaper.
Battlefield coverage often exposed inaccuracies in assertions by
military sources, concluded Lewis, who worked with a team of researchers
at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.
But he said that because broadcasters avoided showing graphic images
that might disturb viewers, they gave a sanitized view of the war.
"As a result, many viewers felt that the front-line footage provided by
embeds was like watching a 'war film' — full of action, but without the
grisly consequences," Lewis wrote.
At the same time, front-line reporting often took precedence over other
issues, oversimplifying the conflict, he added.
Lewis and his colleagues interviewed 27 broadcast journalists and 10
British and U.S. defense officials described as "key personnel," the BBC
said in a summary of the findings.
They conducted an extensive analysis of television and radio broadcasts,
comparing overall coverage by four of Britain's main television outlets
in 1,534 reports and then looking at how a wider range of broadcasters,
including some on cable television and radio, reported seven selected
events, the BBC said.
The researchers said British broadcasters were more evenhanded than
their American counterparts, whom the team said displayed an "overt
bias" in favor of U.S. forces.
But the British journalists did tend to assume that what they were told
by the government was true, the researchers said.
Nine out of every 10 references to weapons of mass destruction displayed
a presumption that Iraq possessed them, Lewis wrote.
"This suggests that 'spin' from the British and U.S. governments was
successful in framing the coverage, while the doubters were less
heeded," he wrote.
Questions about whether Saddam Hussein had such banned arms have become
central to the postwar debate, with critics citing the coalition's
failure to find evidence of the weapons to accuse Britain and America of
hyping arguments for war.
The research team also found that British broadcasters were twice as
likely during the war to portray Iraqis as favoring the U.S.-led
invasion than to show them as suspicious or hostile.
While journalists in Iraq gave a balanced picture of opinion there, news
anchors referred seven times more often to jubilant Iraqis than
disgruntled ones, the team said.
AP-WS-11-06-03 1021EST
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