In When the Press
Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina, published by the University of Chicago Press
in 2007, authors W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston
analyze the relationship between the press and American politics. The authors
comment on the media’s flaccid performance in delivering the truth during Bush’s
years as the United States
president. According to the text, the reporters’ dependence on official
political sources prevented them from serving as the “watchdog” of political activities.
Thus, the press’ reliance on government sources caused the public to see only
one side to the story. The writers illuminate the truth behind Washington and the news,
during the years between 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, in this eye-opening book.
They closely analyze the weakness of the media’s reporting during the Iraq War
years, Abu Ghraib case, and the Katrina disaster.
A major criticism during Bush’s presidency was
his decision of declaring war against Iraq. After 9/11, the Bush
administration was suspicious of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein; they linked him
with weapons of mass destruction and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Despite lack
of pure evidence of the situation in Iraq,
the public proclaimed support when Bush declared war and sent troops to Iraq.
Major news organizations helped publicize and sell the campaign to the American
people. Bennett and his coauthors comment on how the news reporting during the
early years in the Iraq
war appeared scripted. According to the text, it was “about power in Washington, and in
particular, Mr. Bush’s mastery of the imagery of success…”
Government officials created a “spin” with the news
reporting, making the Bush administration appear knowledgeable. The press’s
reliance on official sources prevented the coverage of other voices. The story
was only one-sided, focusing on the Republican Party’s viewpoints. The
Democrats shied away from the press because they did not want to appear
critical of the president’s policies; they did not want negative feedback from
the media and public. During the invasion to Iraq, “the downplaying of
objections to claims made by the Bush administration about the presence of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a link between that country and 9/11”.
The main sources for much of the press are the high
government officials, who control what is released society. The media allowed
the administration take over their reporting and create a false reality. The
authors point out that with news deliverance, “reality is first constructed to
fit policy preferences and then reinforced through continuous news management,
including pressure and intimidation”. The mainstream press failed to challenge the
Bush administration’s arguments for an invasion of Iraq and allowed the officials to
manipulate their work. Thus, the obligation of finding the truth behind Bush’s
motives of going to war was kept from the public because of the media’s failure
to seek out and report the reality of the situation.
Another topic the
authors carefully and convincingly analyze is the Abu Ghraib case. Public
approval ratings of the Iraq War significantly plunged after the photos of
prisoner torture at the Abu Ghraib prison surfaced in the press in 2004. The
images humiliated the United
States, and the Bush administration tried to
counter reports of the existence of torture at the prison. Journalists
continued to display vulnerability and timidity during the Abu Ghraib scandal
as Washington
officials controlled what could be reported to the public. Bennett writes,
“…the inability of the press to prominently report and sustain alternative
perspectives to challenge spin, leaving public opinion management and political
accountability in the hands of the government”.
The stories and
snapshots, of what appeared like torture, were commonly coined by the press as abuse.
According to the book, four months of torture already occurred after the photos
were shown to the public. Thus, the Defense Department possibly knew what was
going on in the prisons, but did not want the world to know of it. With media politics, information is framed or indexed, in a
particular way, so that the coverage stems only from the government officials;
this occurs because the administration wants to control the information sent
out to the public. Bennett writes, it is only “…power talks with the loudest
and sometimes the only voice in high-stakes, hard-news stories” . Legitimate
evidence exists outside the government, but most reporters choose to obtain
details from high-level sources. This can cause inaccurate reporting.
Hurricane Katrina
allowed the journalists to get ahead of their game and enter a no-spin zone,
since “the government were on a vacation” when the catastrophe hit. The
politicians’ brief delay gave the reporters an opportunity to report without the administration's influence. “The capacity to show viewers unedited live coverage
of an event of such a magnitude, and to pit inept officials against their
incapacity to spin away such a sprawling reality, enabled the press to
orchestrate something of a national deliberation” . With the assistance of
technology, news stories revealed the administration and government’s lack of
response to the natural disaster.
Moreover, the world
received a glimpse of Bush’s failure in directing and handling a national
crisis. It was an event that caught the government officials off-guard; they
only found out about the extent of the catastrophe through the media (radio,
newspapers, and television). Bennett writes, “…daily routines of press politics
were reestablished…Katrina does tell us something about what it takes to create
a moment of truly independent press coverage”. The Democratic Party’s
popularity dramatically rose after the revelation, and members of the party spoke
out and criticized Bush. The coverage of Katrina was a breaking point but after
a week, the news begun to return to its familiar journalistic patterns. Despite
the independence of the press during the Katrina incident, the media still
depends on politics for their sources of information.
The attitude displayed
by the media during the Bush years shows how press reporting has deteriorated
because the press relied solely on high government officials for information.
Challenging the reality created by high officials invited punishment by White
House. In addition, journalists who challenged them were considered
unpatriotic. These reporters chose to allow the Bush administration to control
what could be released to the public. For years, the press has only looked into
Washington as
their reliable sources, not elsewhere. As the text suggested, the media needs
to be more independent because society relies on them for reliable information.
The book is excellent in
terms of understanding the role of the press in democracy. The authors
formulate a thorough overview of the press-politics
relationship during Bush’s presidency, while focusing on the Iraq War, Abu
Ghraib, and Hurricane Katrina. In the end, readers only are left hoping that
objectivity and the quality of reporting in journalism will emerge again.
Anne P. Rivera is a journalism major at Rutgers-Newark. Posted September 2009.
