The Media, Public Opinion and War

By Marc Schulman, The American Thinker:

Think of it as a feedback loop. The majority party initiates a war that initially has wide public support; the media covers the war; the media's coverage has an influence on public opinion; if a sufficiently large change in public opinion takes place, an election will result in the opposition party becoming the majority party; and the new majority party alters the war policies that had been followed by the former majority party. No matter how "objective" the media may be, it is an integral part of the electoral process.

When it began, the Iraq war, like most (all?) American wars, met the approval of a substantial majority of Americans. James Q. Wilson, in the current issue of City Journal, cites the results of an evaluation of network news broadcasts by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). The results were illuminating, to say the least:

• During the "active war" against Saddam (which I take to mean until Bush's "mission accomplished" speech), 51% of the media's reports about the war were negative. Even before the insurgency began, the media's reporting was evenly split.


• Six months later, 77% were negative. Note that this was well before the Abu Ghraib scandal.


• At the time of the 2004 presidential election, 89% were negative. Even so, Bush won the election, indicating that the media's selection of stories did not (yet) dominate voting decisions.


• By the spring of 2006, 94% of the stories were negative. There's no reason to believe that the media's take on the war became less negative as the November elections neared. Nor is there yet any empirical evidence (that I'm aware of, at any rate) that the media's near-unanimity was what put the Democrats over the top. However, I think its reasonable to assume that negative (or positive) reporting has a cumulative effect on voters' perceptions.

After summarizing the CMPA's study, Wilson avers that "[p]eople who oppose the entire War on Terror run much of the national press, and they go to great lengths to make waging it difficult." That they have. He singles out the New York Times—as have I, on many occasions.

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