Steven Livingston

Embedding the Truth: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Objectivity and Television Coverage of the Iraq War

This article reports on a cross-cultural analysis of television coverage of the 2003 Iraq War that seeks to assess and understand the dimensions of objectivity in the news during wartime. A total of 1,820 stories on five American networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel [FNC]) and on the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera were included in the study. The study assessed bias on two levels:tone of individual stories and the macro-level portrait of the war offered by each network. Results showed that at the story level, the overwhelming number of stories broadcast by Al Jazeera and the American networks other than FNC were balanced. Yet the data also revealed a strong bias in support of the American-led war effort at FNC and important differences in how the various networks covered the war. Also, broadcasters showed a war devoid of blood, dissent, and diplomacy, focusing instead on a sanitized version of combat. Overall, the study found evidence that the news norm of objectivity is defined in large part by culture and ideology more than events, as the norm would imply. The study also explored in detail the coverage of embedded reporters to assess their objectivity and compare their coverage to other types of reporters, especially “unilaterals” with whom they shared the battlefield.

Humanitarian crises and U.S. foreign policy: Somalia and the CNN effect reconsidered

This article explores the relationship between foreign policy making and news media coverage. Specifically, we examine the CNN effect, understood here as elite decision makers’ loss of policy control to news media. The initial decisions concerning U.S. intervention in Somalia are examined and related to the nature and extent of media coverage devoted to the humanitarian crisis there. We find that in the case of Somalia, news coverage trends do not support the claim that news attention to Somalia led to the Bush administrations decision to intervene. On the basis of content analysis and interviews of officials in Washington and Africa, we argue that the decision to intervene was the result of diplomatic and bureaucratic operations, with news coverage coming in response to those decisions.

Editors' Introduction: A Semi-Independent Press: Government Control and Journalistic Autonomy in the Political Construction of News

This introduction to a special issue of Political Communication discusses changes in the political content of news and introduces the concerns of the three articles in this symposium regarding the autonomy of the press in setting the political agenda. While considerable agreement exists about the shrinking space for hard news and the rise of sensationalism and infotainment formats, there is less scholarly agreement about whether the remaining hard news space is less subject to the news management efforts of public officials and elites and more likely to be filled with narratives driven by events and journalistic initiatives. We propose looking at news construction as a negotiated process involving both routine high levels of official management and circumstances under which events offer journalists opportunities to write more independent political scripts.

The Effects of Satellite Technology on Newsgathering from Remote Locations

Over the course of the last decade, the equipment used by news organizations to transmit text, voice, and images from locations without fixed or operational communications links has changed radically. Whereas remote real-time transmissions once required tons of satellite uplink equipment, generators, and a stable of technicians, approximately the same can be accomplished today with a laptop sized device and handheld digital camera. This sort of technological prowess was seen most recently in the 2003 war in Iraq. We hypothesize that, as a result of these technological developments, the likelihood of newsgathering from remote locations has increased. By “remote location,” we mean any place without the standard technical infrastructure (fixed satellite uplinks or high-speed terrestrial lines). Most often, remoteness of this sort is a feature of nonurban, less developed regions of the world. This hypothesis is a critical but untested presumption underlying recent debates concerning the CNN effect, event-driven news, and other aspects of the changing nature of the relationships between news media and policy. In our analysis, we find evidence of a decrease in the effects of remoteness on levels of U.S. media coverage of distant events.

Indexing news after the cold war: Reporting U.S. ties to Latin American paramilitary organizations

According to Bennetts indexing hypothesis, the range of voices and viewpoints in news and editorials is “indexed” to “the range of views expressed in mainstream government debate about a given topic.” This seems particularly true in news concerning U.S. foreign policy goals and practices. This article suggests that journalism in the post‐Cold War environment has greater latitude in including dissident voices and ideas that previously would have been “marginalized” from the mainstream press. Two comparative case studies are offered in support of this argument. We also expand on the notion of “news icons” as vehicles for the introduction of previously marginalized issues.

Taking the state out of state—media relations theory: how transnational advocacy networks are changing the press—state dynamic

Much of the political communication scholarship concerning state—media relations concludes that the media are highly dependent on and even subservient to the state. This is particular true during wartime. Partial and conditionally based exceptions to this general conclusion include event-driven news and the cascade model. We argue that another important exception to standard conclusions regarding state—media relations involves transnational advocacy organizations and epistemic communities.

The CNN effect reconsidered (again): problematizing ICT and global governance in the CNN effect research agenda

Early CNN effect research considered policy effects associated with cumbersome satellite uplinks of limited capacity. Today, nearly ubiquitous mobile telephony and highly portable satellite uplinks enable high-speed data transmission, including voice and video streaming, from most remote locations. Also, important geopolitical realignments have occurred since the end of the Cold War. The US is now challenged by new economic and cultural powerhouses, and by the rise of networked nonstate actors. It is not simply a matter of realignment among nation-states, as the original CNN effects research noted, but also a realignment between the type, scope and scale of actors involved in global governance. Rather than confining the argument to a consideration of media effects on state policy processes, this article argues that important technological and political developments call for a new research path, one that centers on the relationship between governance and the nature of a given information environment.

Mapping fears: the use of commercial high-resolution satellite imagery in international affairs

In October and November 2001, the Pentagon purchased the rights to all images of Afghanistan taken by the Ikonos remote sensing satellite, a high-resolution satellite owned and operated by Space Imaging, Inc. Ikonos is one of a growing number of privately owned and operated remote sensing satellites. It is suggested that Ikonos and other high-resolution satellites carry at least two challenges to national security policy makers. The first is a challenge to operational security – the ability to plan, prepare and carry out military operations in a controlled information environment. Second, commercial remote sensing presents a political challenge to policy makers. Policy makers today face a greater challenge in their efforts to maintain control over the content of debate concerning national and international security priorities and objectives. It is argued here that the nature of the security policy debate itself is in the midst of a fundamental shift in tone and quality as a result of remote sensing satellite technology. It was principally this latter challenge – and not a concern over operational security – that led to the Pentagons purchase of all Ikonos images during the opening phases of the war in Afganistan.

Doomed to Repeat Iraq News, 2002-2007

This article describes a tendency of news to isolate war policy outcomes from each other and from strategic goals and official responses. These predictable patterns of press coverage and policy developments are referred to as accountability gaps . We argue that professional norms and commercial pressures overwhelm whatever hesitancy news organizations have to alter their organizational and professional behavioral patterns that lead to predictable reoccurrences of accountability gaps. Habitual deference to White House officials means that positive frames are likely to prevail, regardless of conditions on the ground, while declining attention to the costs of war as they accumulate—and becoming less newsworthy-diminishes the weight of counterframes. As casualties and other consequences of policy in Iraq became routine, their news value diminished. As casualties became routine and other costs of war mounted in ways difficult to convey, official good news frames tended to dominate news narratives.

Transparency and the News Media

This chapter considers the relationship between the news media and transparency, defined as the product of “any mechanism—such as a free press, open government hearings and the existence of nongovernmental organizations with an incentive to release objective information about the government—that leads to the public disclosure of information.”1 It attempts to further the analysis by distinguishing different types of transparency and determining how each type affects and is affected by the role of the news media. In this way, we can draw out relationships and possible tensions encountered as governments and the media cope with the development of new information technologies.