Shocking Survey: U.S. media censors Iraq reporting

[G_j]

duh...

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050405-013342-2175r

Survey: U.S. media censors Iraq reporting
By Angela Woodall

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published April 5, 2005


WASHINGTON -- The news media are self-censoring reports about Iraq because of concern for public reaction to graphic images and details about death and torture, according to a survey of 210 U.S. and international journalists.

Many reporters and editors chose less-graphic images and explicit details, or made them less noticeable, according to an online, anonymous survey conducted between September and October 2004 by two American University professors. The study was released March 17.

Findings also included how journalists were using the Internet to enhance coverage of events in Iraq. One-third said they published material -- such as photographic essays, extended interviews and behind-the-scenes reporters' accounts - that was not used in their reports on their news organization's Web site.

The survey is a "window on journalists grappling with how to handle the imagery of war," one of the authors, Jane Hall, a journalism professor at American University in Washington, told United Press International.
..more..

[elehhhhna]

1. This War Covergae Sanitized by General Electric...

[leftchick]

2. it is a surprise coming from UPI...

but... duh! :banghead:

[G_j]

3. actually, it is a valuable survey

because it clearly demonstrates the self censorship of US media.
What is obvious to us ain't so obvious to the TV-sedated public.

[leftchick]

6. I totally agree G j...

I was just venting. :hi:

[G_j]

7. me too... :-)

and for sure, a collective DUH! IS in order :-)

[gratuitous]

4. "Journalists grappling"???

I don't see and "grappling" going on. What I see is an unspoken agreement among all the major news outlets to sanitize the news and protect the administration. "Grappling" would mean that some networks and cable shows are routinely showing the Iraq invasion in all its gory glory while others are concentrating on clean images of happy Iraqis interacting with smiling soldiers. But I don't see any of the former, and a real preponderance of the latter.

"Grappling" would mean that there are some things shown and reported by some news outlets, and other news outlets explaining why they chose not to show the same things. Instead, we get a steady stream of the same homogenized images and reportage that covers the same ground over and over: Our fighting men and women coming home, or what it's really like to sit on your ass day after day in the Green Zone, or the arrival of a big package of stuff from the folks back home, or some general talking about corners turned and tunnels lighted.

There's no grappling going on here. It's a lock-step march with all the precision and choreography of a fascist rally at Nuremburg.

[xchrom]

5. ok -- did they think nobody was noticing?

this is almost amusing.