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Disciplining the Virtual Home Front: Mainstream News and the Web During the War in Iraq

2007; Routledge; Volume: 4; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14791420701459707

1479-4233

John W. Jordan,

Intelligence, Security, War Strategy

Abstract Considered by many to be the first war of the Information Age, the 2003 War in Iraq provided a unique opportunity for observing how the American mainstream press defined the Web's journalistic value and how it reacted to the competition from alternative online news sources. In an attempt to exert control over the Web as a journalistic space, the mainstream press used rhetorics of “professionalism” to discipline online news seekers into conforming to the definition of “news” favored by the mainstream press. This essay analyzes these tactics and their implications for the Web's journalistic potential, and concludes with a call for a more collaborative online journalism that maintains journalistic credibility while also incorporating a wider variety of perspectives. Keywords: Online JournalismBloggingCritical RhetoricAlternative News Acknowledgements The author thanks the editor, anonymous reviewers, and Paul J. Achter for their helpful comments and encouragement. Notes 1. Florian Bieber, “Cyberwar or Slideshow?: The Internet and the Balkan Wars,” Current History 99 (2000): 124–28; Douglas Kellner, “Media Propaganda and Spectacle in the War on Iraq: A Critique of US Broadcasting Networks,” Cultural Studies/Cultural Methodologies 4 (2004): 331. 2. John Barry and Evan Thomas, “Boots, Bytes and Bombs,” Newsweek 17 February 2003, 40. See also Jonathan B. Cox, “Military Spouses Bond Online,” Raleigh News & Observer 24 April 2003, F1; Steve Johnson, “This Living Room War,” Chicago Tribune 20 April 2003, A1. 3. Steve Outing, “War: A Defining Moment for Net News,” Editorandpublisher.com 26 March 2003, http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1848575 (accessed 10 July 2004). 4. Television remained the primary news medium for Americans during the 2003 War in Iraq, but a record number of news seekers logged on to the Web for information about the War. Compared with the events of September 11, 2001, when only 3 percent of Americans with Internet access named the Net as their primary source for news, 17 percent of Americans with Internet access identified the Internet as their primary source for information during the 2003 War in Iraq, 77 percent used the Internet to receive and/or share information about the War, and 44 percent used the Web to search for news about the War. As these numbers indicate, Americans are increasingly turning to the Web as a place to gather and disseminate information about major events important to their everyday lives. Lee Rainie, Susannah Fox, and Deborah Fallows, “The Internet and the Iraq War: How Online Americans Have Used the Internet to Learn War News,” Pew Internet & American Life Project (2003): 2, 5, http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/pdfs/PIP_Iraq_War_Report.pdf (accessed 31 March 2003). 5. Given the breadth of the Web, it would be impossible within the scope of a single essay to conduct an exhaustive analysis of all war-related content on the Web. Therefore, I limit my comments, with few exceptions, to the Websites of major American news organizations and other Websites that received specific mention in mainstream news sources or were rated as high-traffic sites by Internet search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. “Mainstream news” organizations are delineated as American television and major newspaper Websites (e.g., cnn.com, msnbc.com, washingtonpost.com). This designation follows from previous research using these delineations. See Rainie et al., “The Internet and the Iraq War”; Kellner, “Media Propaganda”; Philip Sieb, Beyond the Front Lines: How the News Media Cover a World Shaped by War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 6. Ben Scott, “A Contemporary History of Digital Journalism,” Television & New Media 6 (2005): 90. 7. Throughout this paper, I refer to the War in Iraq as the focal point for the discourses under analysis. I recognize that this title is somewhat ambiguous given that military participation in the region is still ongoing, and the official purpose of America's involvement there has changed several times since 2003. Nevertheless, although President George W. Bush previously declared that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” the White House made it clear that the War in Iraq was not ended. “Bush: Iraq is One Victory in War on Terror,” CNN.com 2 May 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/05/01/sprj.irq.bush.speech/index.html (accessed May 2 2003). In line with this distinction, and with the need to report on the ongoing military engagements in Iraq, many major online news Websites continue to place this information under “War in Iraq” banners. I follow their lead in using this heading to refer to events from the start of military strikes in Iraq to the present day. 8. David Silver, “Current Directions and Future Questions,” in Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, ed. Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers, 280–1 (New York: Routledge, 2003). 9. Marian Meyers, News Coverage of Violence Against Women: Engendering Blame (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002), 117. 10. Jack Zeljko Bratich, “Trust No One (on the Internet): The CIA-Crack-Contra Conspiracy Theory and Professional Journalism,” Television & New Media 5 (2004): 120. 11. Stuart Allan, “Reweaving the Internet: Online News after September 11,” in Journalism After September 11, ed. Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan, 127 (New York: Routledge, 2002). See also Leslie Walker, “Browsing during Wartime,” Washington Post, 4 October 2001, E1. 12. Steve Jones, “The Bias of the Web,” in The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory, ed. Thomas Swiss and Andrew Herman, 177 (New York: Routledge, 2000). 13. Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” Communication Monographs 56 (1989): 101. 14. Edward Schiappa, Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 4. 15. My use of the term “discipline” borrows from Michel Foucault's discussion of discursive power and its ability to construct notions of what is “good” and “bad,” based not on something objective but on the distinctions these terms are given with respect to each other. In addition, his concept of discipline was also productive, in the sense that it did not just punish bad behavior but rewarded good behavior as well. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1977), 107. 16. Schiappa, Defining Reality, 169. 17. Andrew Herman, The “Better Angels” of Capitalism: Rhetoric, Narrative, and Moral Identity among Men of the American Upper Class (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 6. 18. Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern (New York: Routledge, 1995), 198. See also James Der Derian, Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001); Douglas Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992); Kellner, “Media Propoganda”; Philip Seib, Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); Seib, Beyond the Front Lines; Ella Shohat, “The Media's War,” in Seeing through the Media: The Persian Gulf War, ed. Susan Jeffords and Lauren Rabinovitz (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994); Mimi White, “Site Unseen: An Analysis of CNN's War in the Gulf,” in Seeing through the Media: The Persian Gulf War, ed. Susan Jeffords and Lauren Rabinovitz (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994). 19. Owen Gibson, “Spin Caught in a Web Trap,” The Guardian, 17 February 2003, 34. 20. Rainie et al., “The Internet and the Gulf War,” 6. 21. Rainie et al., “The Internet and the Gulf War,” 6; John B. Horrigan and Lee Rainie, “Counting on the Internet,” Pew Internet & American Life Project (2002), 2, http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/pdfs/PIP_Expectations.pdf (accessed 31 March 2003). 22. Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers, “Introduction,” in Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, ed. Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers, 4 (New York: Routledge, 2003). See also, Allan, “Reweaving the Internet,” 121–2; Barrie Gunter, News and the Net (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003), 11; Rob Shields, “Hypertext Links: The Ethic of the Index and Its Space–Time Effects,” in The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory, ed. Thomas Swiss and Andrew Herman, 149–50 (New York: Routledge, 2000). 23. See Deepa Kumar, “Media, War, and Propaganda: Strategies of Information Management during the 2003 Iraq War,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3 (2006). 24. During the first week of the War, American broadcast and cable television networks received some of the largest traffic increases of any Websites, with mainstream news sites MSNBC.com, Time.com, and FoxNews.com more than doubling their web traffic from the four weeks prior to the start of the War. L. A. Johnson, “Which Spin or Facet of the Iraq War Do You Want?” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 27 March 2003, A9; Leslie Walker, “Web Use Spikes on News of War,” Washington Post 22 March 2003, E1. 25. Rainie et al., “The Internet and the Iraq War,” 5. 26. “The State of the News Media,” Journalism.org, http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2006/narrative_online_intro.asp?cat=1&media=4 (accessed 28 June 2006). 27. Jon Katz, “The Future is the Net,” in What's Next?: Problems and Prospects of Journalism, ed. Robert Giles and Robert W. Snyder, 16 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2001). 28. Johnson, “This Living Room War,” A1. 29. Even after combat officially began, online news seekers continued to search for alternative news sites. During the first week of combat, War-related information displaced “sex” and “Dixie Chicks” as the most searched terms on popular Web search engines. “Al-Jazeera Most Sought-After in Internet Searches,” CNN.com 2 April 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/04/02/al.jazeera.web.ap/index.html (accessed 2 April 2003); “War Ousts Sex and Britney in Internet Searches,” WashingtonPost.com 20 March 2003, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62741-2003Mar20.html (accessed 20 March 2003). This search activity suggests that online news audiences were seeking information from sources beyond those already familiar to them. 30. Mitch Gelman, quoted in Jon Swartz, “Iraq War Could Herald a New Age of Web-Based News Coverage,” USA Today 19 March 2003, 3D. 31. Michael Tackett, “Images Can Shape Public Opinion, for Better or Worse,” Chicago Tribune 24 March 2003, A1. 32. Gunter, News and the Net, 167. 33. Mike Royko, “One Good Story from the Internet Deserves Another,” Chicago Tribune 13 November 1996, A3. 34. See Thomas E. Ruggiero and Samuel P. Winch, “The Media Downing of Pierre Salinger: Journalistic Mistrust of the Internet as a News Source”, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10 (2004), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/ruggiero.html (accessed 10 April 2005). 35. Bratich, “Trust No One,” 120. 36. Bratich, “Trust No One,” 109, 115. 37. Seib, Going Live, 132. 38. Intense preparations were undertaken to ensure that when the War came, online news seekers would be able to access mainstream news sites. As one commentator observed, “The Iraq war [of 2003] was the first blockbuster news event that did not precipitate server paralysis at any major American news site or jam the Internet itself.” Barb Palser, “Online Advances,” American Journalism Review 25 (2003): 41. 39. See Dana Calvo and Paul Lieberman, “Rumors, Hoaxes Get on the Air,” Los Angeles Times 15 September 2001, A24; Dominic Lasorsa, “News Media Perpetuate Few Rumors About 9/11 Crisis,” Newspaper Research Journal 24 (2003); Beth Nissen, “Hear the Rumor? Nostradamus and Other Tall Tales,” CNN.com 3 October 2001, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/03/rec.false.rumors (accessed 10 April 2003); Stephen O'Leary, “Internet Rumor Mill Has Gone into Megadrive,” The Daily Telegraph 3 October 2001), 14. 40. Amy Harmon, “The Search for Intelligent Life on the Internet,” New York Times 23 September 2001, D2. 41. Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Interview at End of Europe Trip,” 9 June 2001, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2001/t06112001_t0609end.html (accessed 12 April 2004). 42. Bob Sullivan, “Experts to Watch This War from Above,” MSNBC.com 21 February 2003, http://www.msnbc.com/news/872612.asp (accessed 10 May 2003). 43. I provide here a sampling of the news ticker messages from major news networks during the opening days of the War (all transcribed by author). From CNN: “Go to CNN.com for 3-D models of Stealth fighter, Tomahawk missile, and other weapons in US arsenal” (21 March 2003); “Maps & satellite photos of Iraq available at CNN.com” (24 March 2003); “Which US military units & coalition forces are involved in the strike on Iraq? Breakdown available at cnn.com” (24 March 2003); “Examine US & Iraqi stocks of munitions, tanks, ships & aircraft at CNN.com” (24 March 2003). From MSNBC: “Now on msnbc.com: Tools of war & targets in Iraq” (21 March 2003); [“Now on msnbc.com: Battle zones: Latest war developments” (24 March 2003); “Now on msnbc.com: Latest battlefield images—Photos from the front” (26 March 2003); “Now on msnbc.com: Map of latest action” (28 March 2003). 44. CNN, for instance, posted assurances on its Website saying that “CNN's policy is not to report information that puts operational security at risk.” “War Tracker,” CNN.com 22 March 2003, http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/war.tracker/index.html (accessed 22 March 2003). 45. The most prominent example of this self-censoring came after Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera realized Rumsfeld's fears by giving away Coalition troop positions during a broadcast; the network withdrew Rivera from his post in Iraq per the Pentagon's request. Peter Johnson and Donna Leinwand, “TV Networks Pull Arnett, Rivera,” USA Today 1 April 2003, A1. 46. Michael M. Grynbaum, “Bloggers Battle Old-School Media for Political Clout,” Boston Globe 6 July 2006, A3. 47. See Cox, “Military Spouses,” F1; Mark Johnson, “Internet, ‘Embedding’ Keep Families Close to Soldiers,” JS Online 26 March 2003, http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/mar03/128808.asp (accessed 26 March 2003); Steve Johnson, “Life During Wartime,” Chicago Tribune 23 March 2003, A1; Michael Silence, “‘Warblogs’ Giving Instant, Unfiltered Views of Conflict,” Knoxville News-Sentinel 2 April 2003, A15. 48. See Bratich, “Trust No One,” 109–39; John Soloski, “News Reporting and Professionalism,” in Social Meanings of News, ed. Dan Berkowitz (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997). 49. See Kumar, “Media, War, and Propaganda.” 50. Quoted in Michelle Delio, “Hackers condemn Arab site hack,” Wired.com 31 March 2003, http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,58277,00.html (accessed 31 March 2003). 51. Patrice O'Shaughnessy, “An Online Army Takes on Terror,” New York Daily News 13 July 2003, 4; Michael D. Sorkin, “Al-Jazeera Web Site Stirs Controversy,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 27 March 2003, A19. 52. “Arab Web Sites Bemoan Iraq ‘Occupation,’” ABCNews.com 10 April 2003, http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20030410_1532.html (accessed 10 April 2003); see also Deirdre Shesgreen, “World Press Is Showing Different, More Graphic War,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 6 April 2003, B5. 53. See “Akamai Declines to Assist Al-Jazerra [sic] Site,” ABCNews.com 4 April 2003, http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20030404_1252.html (accessed 4 April 2003); Jonathan Sidener, “Hackers, Web Hosting Companies Become Censors of War Coverage,” Knoxville News-Sentinel 2 April 2003, A9. 54. “Perspectives,” Newsweek 7 April 2003, 17. 55. Douglas Thomas, Hacker Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 8–9, 94. 56. Byron Acohido, “Hack Attack on Al-Jazeera Raises Questions,” USA Today 31 March 2003, 7B. 57. “Al-Jazeera Booted Off Web, Wall St.,” Houston Chronicle 27 March 2003, A6. 58. See Acohido, “Hack Attack,” 7B; Shesgreen, “World Press,” B5; Sidener, “Hackers,” A9. 59. At the time of this writing, the Website could be found at http://www.iraqbodycount.net (accessed 4 April 2004). 60. Suzanne Smalley, “Counting Civilians: Iraq's War Dead,” Newsweek 7 April 2003, 11; see also John M. Broder, “US Military Has No Count of Iraqi Dead in Fighting,” New York Times 1 April 2003, B3. 61. “Iraq Body Count—Methodology,” Iraqbodycount.net, http://www.iraqbodycount.net/background.htm#methods (accessed 12 April 2003). 62. Josh Chafetz, “Body Count: Inside the Voodoo Science of Calculating Civilian Casualties,” The Weekly Standard 15 April 2003, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/554awdqo.asp (accessed 16 April 2003). 63. See Bratich, “Trust No One,” 112. 64. “Conventional Wisdom,” Newsweek 7 April 2003, 6; Silence, “Warblogs,” A15. 65. Anita Hamilton, “Best of the War Blogs,” Time 7 April 2003, 91. 66. Howard Kurtz, “‘Webloggers,” Signing On As War Correspondents,” Washington Post 23 March 2003, F4. 67. Bernhard Warner, “US Soldier ‘Bloggers’ Report from War Zone,” Reuters 26 March 2003, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2453031 (accessed 26 March 2003). The Pentagon reversed this stance later in the War and shut down several blogs written by American soldiers in Iraq. Military officials cited concern that the blogs might leak national security information, although others suspect a political motive and the American public's perception of the War. Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell, “Web of Influence,” Foreign Policy (November/December 2004): 40. 68. Howard Kurtz, “When Blogs Bite Back,” Washington Post 18 April 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/02/17/BL2005040315095_pf.html (accessed 18 April 2005); Drezner and Farrell, “Web of Influence,” 37. 69. Drezner and Farrell, “Web of Influence,” 32. See also Palser, “Online Advances,” 40. It is important to note that these laudations came long after the initial negative comments had been made. In other words, this was not a situation of initial statement and immediate revision or retraction. 70. Rory McCarthy, “Salam's Story,” The Guardian 30 May 2003, 2. 71. See Bob Sullivan, “Net Diaries Describe Baghdad Attack,” MSNBC.com 20 March 2003, http://www.msnbc.com/news/888383.asp (accessed 20 March 2003); “Weblogs of War,” MSNBC.com 7 April 2003, http://www.msnbc.com/modules/interactive.asp?id=/d/gal/Blogs_msnbc_iraqwar.js&mainid=OP&navid=ATTACK&0dm=C1HPO (accessed 7 April 2003). 72. Mark Johnson, “Internet ‘Embedding’”; Silence, “Warblogs,” A15. See also Anne-Marie O'Conner, “Time of Blog and Bombs,” Los Angeles Times 27 December 2004, E1; Leslie Walker, “Operation Commentary Storm,” Washington Post 23 March 2003, H7; Bernhard Warner, “LiveWire: For Bloggers, War Is No Cakewalk,” Reuters 9 April 2003, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=2536810 (accessed 9 April 2003). 73. Michael Iacuessa, “Online War ‘Blogs’ Offer Independent Views,” Santa Cruz Sentinel 5 April 2003, http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2003/April/05/local/stories/02local.htm (accessed 6 April 2003); Palser, “Online Advances,” 44. 74. McCarthy, “Salam's Story,” 2; O'Connor, “Time of Blog,” E1. 75. Beth Gillin, “A ‘Blog’ Goes Silent, and World Holds Its Breath,” Philadelphia Inquirer 27 March 2003, http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/5490233.htm (accessed 30 March 2003); Walker, “Operation Commentary Storm,” H7. 76. For examples of American soldier blogs in mainstream media articles, see Silence, “Warblogs,” A15. 77. Walker, “Operation Commentary Storm,” H7; McCarthy, “Salam's Story,” 2; O'Connor, “Time of Blog,” E1. 78. Johnson, “Which Spin,” A9. 79. Erica Hill, “Blogging for a Better View,” CNN.com 26 March 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/03/26/hln.wired.blog/index.html (accessed 27 March 2003). 80. O'Connor, “Time of Blog,” E1. 81. Cynthia L. Webb, “The Great Blogging Ethics Debate,” Washington Post 9 April 2003, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63407-2003Apr9.html (accessed 10 April 2003). 82. Webb, “Great Blogging Ethics.” 83. Bratich, “Trust No One,” 127. 84. Scott, “Digital Journalism,” 110. 85. Silver, “Current Directions,” 288; John M. Sloop, “Ideology,” in Unspun: Key Concepts for Understanding the World Wide Web, ed. Thomas Swiss (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 92, 96. 86. See David Batstone, “Virtually Democratic: Twenty Essentials for the Citizen in a Network Society,” in The Good Citizen, ed. David Batstone and Eduardo Mendieta (New York: Routledge, 1999), 35; Gunter, News and the Net, 32; Seib, Going Live, 76. 87. See Josh Boyd, “The Rhetorical Construction of Trust Online,” Communication Theory 13 (2003): 392–410; Marilyn Greenwald, “Beware of ‘Techno-Journalism,’” Quill, August 2004, 22–24; John W. Jordan, “A Virtual Death and a Real Dilemma: Identity, Trust, and Community in Cyberspace,” Southern Communication Journal 70 (2005): 200–18. 88. See Ted Bridis, “Faults Found in Online Reporter's Stories,” Washington Post 10 May 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051000486.html (accessed 10 May 2005); Cheryl Johnston, “Digital Deception,” American Journalism Review 25 (2003): 10–11; Lasorsa, “News Media Perpetuate,” 10–21. 89. Katz, “The Future is the Net,” 16. 90. Kevin Kawamoto, “Conclusion,” in Digital Journalism, ed. Kevin Kawamoto (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 168. 91. Barbie Zelizer, “Journalists as Interpretive Communities,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10 (2003): 219–37. 92. Leander Kahney, “Citizen Reporters Make the News,” Wired News 17 May 2003, http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58856,00.html (accessed 20 May 2003). See also Christopher M. Schroeder, “Is This the Future of Journalism?” MSNBC.com 18 June 2004, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5240584/site/newsweek/ (accessed 20 June 2004); Kristie Lu Stout, “Korean Bloggers Making a Difference,” CNN.com, March 31, 2005, http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/03/31/spark.ohmynews/index.html (accessed 1 April 2005). 93. See Al Gibes, “Community Journalism on Web likely to Grow,” Wyoming Tribune-Eagle 11 January 2005, B6; Leslie Walker, “On Local Sites, Everyone's a Journalist,” Washington Post 9 December 2004, E1. 94. Quoted in Leslie Walker, “Online News with a New Angle,” Washington Post 22 June 2006, D1. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn W. Jordan John W. Jordan is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee