Panel Debate on the Media and Iraq
War Raises More Questions Than Answers

By Heather Holliday I December 6, 2004

The media could have done a better job in the lead up to the war. And, the state of the media is problematic. That much was clear during a panel discussion held Nov. 30 at UCSD of news coverage of the war in Iraq. Other than that, there were just more questions: Is embedding journalists with troops good or bad? Why was coverage of the lead up to the war lacking? Would the outcome have changed if coverage had been better?

The panelists covered topics that ranged from the role that the media plays in a democracy to the changing business of the media. Panel members were Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, Michael Mosettig, senior producer for defense and foreign policy at the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and Robert A. Kittle, editorial page editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Moderator of the program was Miles Kahler, Rohr Professor of International Relations and director of the Institute for International, Comparative & Area Studies, the event sponsor.

From left to right: Orville Schell, Michael Mosettiy, Miles Kahler, and Rober Kittle

Each panelist spoke for about 20 minutes, offering his concerns and analysis of the media in relationship to war coverage. That was followed by a question and answer session with the audience. Kittle posed questions such as whether a democracy has the stomach for war when it unfolds on TV and why, before the war, the news media failed to scrutinize the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq. Mosettig also posed a number of questions, including why the administration changed the government’s 50-year embedding policy. Schell discussed what the role of the press is in a democratic society, adding that the war was not covered well because there is a lack of media outlets that encourage good journalism.

Here is a roundup of the panelists views:

Robert A. Kittle

Kittle posed three questions: Is embedding journalists with the troops on the battlefield a good idea? Can a democracy handle war when it unfolds on TV night after night? Why did the news media fail to scrutinize the Bush administrations’ rationale for the war.

“Clearly there are positives and negatives,” he said on the topic of embedding journalists with troops. “We now literally see battles unfolding. The Pentagon cannot control and engineer that kind of news coverage on the ground. [Still] the question has to be asked, Does this embedding process compromise the essential independence of reporters? To some extent it does.”

Kittle then asked “whether a democracy has the stomach for war when it is brought into our living rooms in real time night after night.” He went on to say, “It’s going to have an impact on policy members. Not necessarily a bad impact if it makes everybody less eager to go to war. But you have to wonder whether we can sustain – let’s say the war on terrorism – in an era when we are seeing actual beheadings. We have to wonder what the long-term impact is on democracy.”

Finally, Kittle brought up that, prior to the war, the news media did not scrutinize the Bush administrations’ rationale for going to war. “The news media tended to accept what was being said about the security situation in Iraq from the Bush administration with relatively little skepticism,” he said, adding that, in part, it was because there was no independent source for journalists to talk to. “In the future, the news media will all be healthily more skeptical than we were. That will serve our readers and viewers a lot better.”

Michael Mosettig

“Even if we had done a better job [questioning the claims about the weapons of mass destruction before the war], would it have changed the outcome?” asked Mosettig, adding that in recent memory we’ve never had an administration that seemed so determined to go to war as this administration. Plus, Congress was not standing in the way. “You have this administration determined to go to war,” he said. “So they go to war.”

Mosettig also discussed one positive outcome of embedding. “No matter how this war ends, we will not have the rancor between the press and the military that we did coming out of Vietnam,” he said. “I don’t think the military loves us by any stretch of the imagination, but they’ve gotten a better idea of how we do our job and the press has gotten a much better idea of how they do their job.” Still, he said, the press came out of the Vietnam War confident about its performance and its place in the social and cultural firmament of the country. “Coming out of Iraq, coming into the first decade of this century, I don’t think we can say we’re confident on either of those points.”

Orville Schell

Schell stressed the need to remind ourselves of the role of the press in a society such as our own. “We are a check and balance,” he said. “This is very much the design of this country.” However, in “the coverage up to the war, there was simply almost no major media outlets being watchdogs, being skeptics, raising the right questions. Schell offered a few reasons as to why this happened.

There is the monetary reason, he said. “Perhaps the time would be better spent, from a monetary perspective, having ‘The Apprentice’ on.” Another part of the problem is the changing relationship between the media and government. “What we find today is not only a lack of embracing the media as a watchdog, but we find [the government] demeaning it, tying them as liberal, tying them as troublemakers, tying them as unpatriotic.”

Yet another part of the problem, he said is that not only is there a disrespect for the media and the role of the media, there is also a changing view of where truth, knowledge and understanding come from. “We’re in a very demoralized state,” he said, “where the role of the journalist is considered to be almost dishonorable in Washington, a troublemaker and certainly not patriotic. Access is constantly threatened if you get offline, if you don’t please those in power.”

With that, Schell also offered a couple of stark warnings. “This is a very difficult and dangerous time because the media is so much in peril both because of the relationship it has with the marketplace and the relationship it has with the government,” he said. “This is a real dilemma for this country. If the lights go out in an active, assertive, aggressive, skeptical watchdog media, I think the lights will go out in this country in terms of its democratic form of government.”