Media professionals and academics gathered Thursday to discuss how the war in Iraq has been portrayed and whether there's been a return to the partisan press.
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Daniela Dimitrova, an assistant professor at Iowa State, who analyzed online content, found that the vast majority of coverage focused on the military conflict and the violence of war, rather than the reason for the war and the fight for democracy in Iraq.
Her critique dealt only with the official war period, March 20 through May 1, 2003.
"The most interesting shift in the middle part of the war is that human interest stories become more common," she said, citing a rise in stories about Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers.
In a separate study, Victor Pickard, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, found that in its print editions, the New York Times often presented a sanitized view of the war in its early days, noting that the Times is considered the nation's paper of record.
Pickard, whose study focused on the first week of the war, said he was surprised to see how the paper covered the conflict.
"This is yet more evidence that there are many holes in the elite, liberal media argument," he said. "In coverage of the war, they pretty much get in line behind the president."
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