1 Universiteit Antwerpen A content analysis of “Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War” by Kull, Ramsay and Lewis. Francine Carron Media & Politiek Prof. Walgrave December 10, 2009
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Universiteit Antwerpen
A content analysis of “Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War” by Kull, Ramsay and Lewis.
Francine Carron
Media & Politiek
Prof. Walgrave
December 10, 2009
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Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. An analysis of the media
A. Objectivity versus subjectivity
B. Print versus Television media
C. Choice of Network
D. News Frequency & Negativity
III. Public Opinion (Misperceptions)
A. Media & Social Theory shape public opinion
B. Partisan Polarization
C. Framing & Priming
IV. Conclusion
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Large debates and scholarly studies have been conducted about the Iraq War and the
influence of the media on public opinion. Numerous surveys have taken place to find who and
what triggered the American public to support their President in the war on terror. According to
Kull, Ramsay and Lewis the public was mislead by their administration through the dispersion of
misperceptions. In this paper I analyze the research of Kull et al using theories of political
communication. The first part of the paper examines the media and the second part analyzes the
public opinion relating back tothe text Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War.
I. Introduction
The Bush administration had the challenging task to convince the American public that
an invasion of Iraq was necessary. The American government had to encourage their people that
there was a potential threat to their country. Hence the government stated that Iraq was
supporting Al-Qaeda and Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The majority of
the people believed the statements of the Bush Administration. Even though, the largest part of
the population was not persuaded that the United States (US) should take unilateral action.
The American people only wanted to go to war with approval of the United Nations (UN)
Security Council. In spite of the governmental efforts to make it a clear to the public that Iraq
was a threat, the fact that the Bush administration couldn’t find the WMD the American people
wanted to wait with an offensive until there was more evidence of an existing threat.
Nevertheless, when the UN Security Council didn’t approve of the war, the President decided tot
take unilateral action and launched the war on terror. Oddly enough, the public supported their
President and when it was confirmed that there were no WMD they continued supporting him.
The main question in the article is “Why is the public so accommodating? Did they
simply change their views about the war despite their earlier reservations? Or did they in some
way come to have certain false beliefs or misperceptions that would make going to war appear
more legitimate, consistent with pre-existing beliefs”?1
Kull, Ramsay and Lewis try to answer their central question by “first exploring the
degree of pervasiveness of misperceptions, secondly analyzing the relationship between the
holding of these misperceptions and support for the Iraq war. Thirdly, the authors of
‘misperceptions, the media, and the Iraq war analyze the relationship between the holding of
misperceptions and the respondent’s primary news source. Fourthly, they evaluate the
relationship between attention to news and the level of misperceptions and fifthly Kull, Ramsay
1 Kull, R. a. (2003-2004). Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly , 569-598.
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and Lewis analyze misperceptions as a function of political attitudes, including intention to vote
for the President and party identification.”2
The three authors of ‘misperceptions, the media and the Iraq war’ concluded using survey
data analysis that while checking for other variables, including gender, race and age, the
respondents’ primary media source is the strongest indicator of misperceptions.3
I. Media Analyses
A. Objectivity versus Subjectivity
The news media is a significant source of facts and data. The majority of people around
the world rely on the news for getting their daily local, national or international information. This
information can range from celebrity news, current events to political information. As most
people, Americans also rely heavily on the media for their news. According to Robinson and
Kohut’s survey of the credibility of 39 news media organizations and personality’s finds the
majority of those surveyed (2,104 adults) believe most of what they learn from the press.4 This
can be very dangerous because today’s press coverage is said to contain a high level of bias.
However, back in the days, press coverage was quite objective. As for Schudson and
Gans, objectivity arose as a means of attaining journalistic credibility.5 Journalistic credibility is
defined as appealing to a broader demographic without alienating many readers. “Objectivity and
its central component, detachment, offered the press a strategy for expanding its market by
balancing perspectives from at least two sides of an issue.”6 Tuchman elaborated on this point,
arguing that detached objectivity was a strategic ritual that not only preserved journalistic
credibility with readers.7 Contemporary journalistic reporting is quite different.
2 Kull, R. a. (2003-2004). Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly , 569-598.
3 Cihasky, C. G.-Y. (n.d.). The Media, Public Opinion and Iraq: The Roles of Tone and Coverage in Public
Misperceptions.
4 Id.
5 Gans, H. (1979). Deciding What’s News. New York: Vintage Book. Schudson, M. (1978). Discovering the News:A
Social History of American Newspapers. New York : Basic Books.
6 Aday, S., Livingston, S., & Hebert, M. (2005). Embedding the Truth A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Objectivity and
Television Coverage of the Iraq War. Press/Politics 10 (1) , 3-21.
7 Tuchman, G. ( 1972). Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen’s Notions of Objectivity.
American Journal of Sociology 77 (4) , 660–79.
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For example the study of Gilens which is an analysis of public perceptions of a specific
policy area, finds that both network television news and news magazines depict poor Americans
as being African American more often than is really the case.8 This result implies that
information distributed by the news media, even if it is similar across news sources, may not be
exact. Scholars such as Shelley and Ashkins examined the accuracy of news reports across
different mediums. Their study compared media images of crime trends to police statistics.
Shelley and Ashkins find that newspapers more accurately represent police statistics when
compared to television reports.9 These findings are important because the public’s perceptions
about crime are largely based on television reports, and those reports fail to accurately report
police statistics, thus providing the public with a wrong version of the reality. Examinations of
Gerbner et al, Lichter, Rothman, O’Guinn and Shrum also concur with the many content
analyses of television. These authors proved that a number of constructs are consistently
overrepresented on television relative to their real- world incidence.10
This becomes problematic when the public starts to accept the media bias as truth.
Scholars name this phenomenon an ‘effect of cultivation theory’. Cultivation Theory “posits that
frequent viewing of these distortions of reality will increasingly result in the perception that these
distortions reflect reality.”11
In other words, the public believes what it hears, reads and sees.
A great example of an incident where the public was misinformed by the media is the
belief among the public that led to the support for the war on terror. The staggering results of
Kull et al analyzing the misperceptions that led to support for the war in Iraq are very significant
as they challenge the assumption of precise, correct, impartial, objective coverage in journalism.
It is widely assumed that America’s support of the war on terror was shaped through the media
which distributed false information.
B. Print versus Television Media
The study by Althaus of American news consumption during times of national crises
shows that there are “notable changes in the mix of news media used by Americans since
8 Gilens, Martin. 1996. “Race and Poverty in America: Public Misperceptions and the American Correlates of
Television Viewing.”
9 Sheley, J. F., & Ashkins, C. D. (1981). Crime, Crime News and Crime Views. Public Opinion Quarterly 45 , 492-506.
10 George Gerbner, L. G. (1984). Political Correlates of Television Viewing. Public Opinion Quarterly: 48 , 283-300.
11 George, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., Signorielli, N., & Shanahan, J. (2002). Growing Up with Television: Cultivation
Processes. In J. Bryant, & M. Dolf Zillmann, Media Effects:Advances in Theory and Research (pp. 43-67). New Jersey
: Erlbaum. Thomas, O., & Shrum, L. J. (1997). The role of television in the construction of consumer reality. Journal
of Consumer Research 23 , 278-294.
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9/11.”12
This statement is proved by surveys conducted by the Pew Center for the People and the
Press. These surveyors asked respondents if they could name up to three media as primary
sources of news. In the first week of September 2001, print media was the most important
source. In the second week of January 2002 cable television had become the most significant
news source. Americans had also indicated on the surveys that they combine television news
with internet for getting information on public affairs. The audit bureau data released by the
Newspaper Association of America confirms that U.S. daily newspaper circulation in the period
from September 31, 2001 through March 31, 2002, was 0.6% lower than in the prior six-month;
an obvious decline from print to television media after 9/11.
However, the American public does not realize that due to the shift from print media to
cable television for their news they are shifting from in-depth reporting to a medium that easily
distributes biases and doesn’t provide context for understanding the Iraq war. As a result
misperception about the war on terror was distributed with ease by the media and was
effortlessly accepted by the public. It is important for viewers to be aware that the messages they
receive from television news sources may not necessarily be entirely accurate. Moreover, U.S.
broadcast networks, generally, had the tendency to be more entrenched in the Pentagon and Bush
administration than print journalists.
Kull, Ramsay and Lewis discovered in their research that “those who got their news from
print were less likely to have all three misperceptions” on the war on terror. D’Alessio and Allen
would agree with the previous statement. In their meta-analysis of presidential elections these
two authors compared print and television coverage of presidential elections between 1948 and
2000. They find that there were no biases in the amount of reporting given to the two major party
candidates in print media. D’Alessio and Allen do come across a small amount of bias in the
amount of reporting among televised news networks. Their conclusions validate that the amount
of reporting between mediums may differ, and televised reporting may contain systematic
predispositions.13
For that reason those people who shaped their public opinion based on the
print media had not as much misperceptions than those who received their news from network
television.
Volgy and Schwarz discovered that respondents who cite television as their primary news
source have less knowledge of politics, are not as much politically active and have a lower sense
12
Althaus, S. L. (2002). American news consumption during times of national crisis. Political Science and Politics ,
517-521.
13D'Alessio, D., & Allen, M. ( 2000). Media Bias in Presidential Elections: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of
Communication: 50 , 133-156.
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of political efficacy than those whose primary news source is newsprint.14
In the case of Kull et
al 80 percent of the respondents in the PIPA/KN poll stated that their primary news source was
television. As a consequence one can assume that those respondents are not really
knowledgeable about politics and therefore have a higher probability of misperceiving political
policies or actions in general.
C. Choice of Network
Next to noting the importance of television in shaping public opinion Volgy and Schwarz
also find the choice of network significant. These two authors find that ABC news viewers are
more concerned about crime and NBC news viewers are the least familiar with outside political
figures. By differentiating between the interests of ABC and NBC viewers Volgy and Schwarz
suggest that not only does the type of medium matter (print versus tv), but that variations within
a particular medium (ABC versus NBC) are also important considerations. Thus somewhat
agreeing with Kull et al that misperceptions are to some extent a function of an individual’s
source of news. These findings suggest that the media impact of the news influence varies across
news source. Jordan would comment on these findings that individuals must collect information
to develop opinions subsequently one can conclude that different news sources have different
impacts on public opinion.15
In their research Kull et al were able to prove through PIPA/KN polls that the public had
misperceptions as a function of source of news. The authors asked an aggregate sample of 3,334
respondents the following questions: “‘Where do you tend to get most of your news?’ and
offered the options of newspapers and magazines or TV and radio.” 16
80 percent said that their
primary news source was electronic. Respondents were then asked which network is your
primary source of news. The networks offered were ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, PBS
and NPR, the latter being public networks. These respondents were also asked about their
perceptions, “whether they thought there was evidence of close links between Iraq and Al Qaeda
has been found, whether WMF have been found in Iraq, and whether world public opinion
approved of the United States going to war.”17
According to Kull, Ramsay and Lewis Fox, NPR and PBS were standing out in the
analysis. Fox viewers had the most misperceptions and NPR/PBS viewers and listeners had a
smaller number of misperceptions than commercial news viewers. Using the words of the three
14
Volgy, T. a. (1980). Television Entertainment Programming and Sociopolitical Attitudes . Journalism Quarterly 57
, 150-155.
15 Jordan, D. L. (1993). Newspaper effects on policy preferences. Public Opinion Quarterly , 191-204.
16 Kull, R. a. (2003-2004). Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly , 569-598.
17 Id.
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authors I quote: “in the audience for NPR/PBS, there was an overwhelming majority who did not
have any of the three misperceptions, and hardly any had all three whereas the Fox audience
showed the highest average rate of misperceptions”.18
When respondents were asked if there was evidence that Iraq had close links to Al Qaeda,
they found that misperceptions were at 67 percent with Fox viewers and 16 percent with public
broadcast viewers. When the question was asked whether Iraq was directly involved in
September 11, “the highest level of misperceptions was in the CBS audience (33 percent)
followed by Fox (24 percent), ABC (23 percent), NBC (22 percent) and CNN (21 percent).” 19
When respondents were asked whether the US has found WMD since the war ended, Kull et al.
detected that Fox viewers believed this with 33 percent and a lower 19 to 23 percent of ABC,
NBC, CBS and CNN viewers. While only 11 percent of the PBS viewers assumed this. When
these same group of respondents were asked whether they thought the rest of the world
supported the Iraqi war again 35 percent of Fox viewers was convinced of this statement
compared to five percent of PBS viewers.
In general, Kernel, author of ‘Media Propaganda and Spectacle in the War on Iraq: a
Critique of U.S. Broadcasting Networks’ argues that the U.S. broadcasting networks helped Bush
advance his agenda. For Kernel, the US broadcasting networks provided a conduit for the
Pentagon propaganda and the Bush administration.20
The U.S. networks framed the event as
“Operation Iraqi Freedom” or “War in Iraq.”21
American broadcast networks followed the
Pentagon concept of “shock and awe” and presented the war against Iraq as a great military
spectacle.22
Networks such as Fox and NBC dispersed nothing but propaganda and one side
patriotism. CNN provided only patriotism for the most part. Most 24/7 US cable networks tended
to provide highly sanitized views of the war. These networks rarely showed Iraqi causalities
Arab outrage about the war, global antiwar, anti- U.S. protests, and the negative features of the
war; they only tended pro-military patriotism, propaganda, technological fetishism, celebrating
18
Kull, R. a. (2003-2004). Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly , 569-598.
19 Id.
20 Kellner, D. (2004). Media Propaganda and Spectacle in the War on Iraq: a Critique of U.S. Broadcasting Networks.
Cultural Studies- Critical Methodologies 4 , 329-340.
21 Id.
22 Id.
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the weapons of war and military humanism, highlighting the achievements and heroism of the
U.S. troops.23
The study ‘Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War’ by Kull, Ramsay and Lewis
found that the overwhelmingly pro-war views of the major network commentators led the media
to “downplay the lack of evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda the fact that WMD were
not being found, and the world public opinion was critical of the war” (Kull, Ramsey, Lewis,
593). This illustrates the danger of what happens when political actors manage the media and the
media simply becomes a method of transmission for the government, rather than a critical filter.
An example of such incident where the media has become a passive transmitter of government
messages is when George Bush had made a statement that WMD had been found in Iraq. The
Washington Post ran the front page headline saying Bush: “We found Banned Weapons”.24
This
is an important example as it notes the significance of experts and commentators in exerting
influence on the public.
Volgy, Schwarx, Kull, Ramsay and Lewis are not the only scholars that demonstrated
that the various news sources can influence the public’s opinion and attitudes. Page, Shapiro and
Dempsey also concur with the findings of Volgy Schwarx and Kull et al. Every one of these
authors believes that news commentators and experts have an important impact on public
opinion.
D. News Frequency & Negativity
Kull et al assumed that misperceptions are less when respondents have greater exposure
to news. In other words, when a person watches the news much more, they would have fewer
misperceptions than people whose news watching frequency is much lower. Kull, Ramsay and
Lewis asked respondents “‘how closely are you following the news about the situation in Iraq
now?’ The results showed that 13 percent said they followed the news very closely, 43 percent
somewhat closely, 29 percent not very closely, and 14 percent not closely at all.”25
The findings
illustrated that there “was no relation between the reported level of attention to news and the
frequency of misperceptions.” 26
This statement is in contrast with the findings of Gerbner, Gross, Morgan and Signorielli
that concluded in their research that respondents who watch television news that portrays
23
Kellner, D. (2004). Media Propaganda and Spectacle in the War on Iraq: a Critique of U.S. Broadcasting Networks.
Cultural Studies- Critical Methodologies 4 , 329-340.
24 Roffle, J. (n.d.). Review of Linsky's Book: Impact: How the Press Affects Federal Policymaking.
25 Kull, R. a. (2003-2004). Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly , 569-598.
26 Id.
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moderate political views as a consequence will have more moderate political opinions.27
Many
researches have confirmed the predicted correlation between the amount of television viewing
and the beliefs congruent with television portrayals. Gerbner, Gross, Morgan and Signorielli
state in their article ‘Political correlates of television viewing”, that those who watch more
television are more likely to identify themselves as moderate. Thus for Gerbner et al the higher
the frequency of watching the news the higher change it has to influence an individual’s opinion.
Harrington is another scholar who would agree with the statement of Gerbner, Gross,
Morgan and Signorielli. Harrington compared content and amount of television reporting by
investigating national economic conditions and network reporting of the economy. This scholar
uncovers that networks spend more time (measured in seconds) to negative economic news.28
Soroka, author of ‘Good News and Bad News: Asymmetric Responses to Economic
Information’ would also concur with the previous statement, he believes that the media focuses
more on bad news then on good news. The findings of Harrington suggest that the amount of
reporting may influence public opinion, and the amount of reporting may depend on the type of
news story. Meaning that more time is spent on the coverage of bad news. Therefore, one can
assume that news coverage on Iraq was higher than normal as it was negative news. People’s
opinion should have thus been influenced by high exposure to this type of news. Although
according to Kull et al this was not the case, the public opinion was not shaped by news
frequency but news source.
II. Public Opinion
A. Media & Social Theory shape Public Opinion
We now know that the media can affect people’s opinions. For Kull et al the media
shaped the public opinion leading to support of the Iraq war. However many studies would not
agree with the findings of Kull, Ramsay and Lewis in relation to the role of the media in shaping
the public opinion.
Volgy and Schwarz have examined the news media’s ability to shape the views, opinions
of people and its effect on social behavior.29
These two scholars believe that due to the fact that
the media can shape public opinion political actors have accepted the media and even use it as an
27
George Gerbner, L. G. (1984). Political Correlates of Television Viewing. Public Opinion Quarterly: 48 , 283-300
28 Harrington, D. E. (1989). Economic news on television: The determinants of coverage. Public Opinion Quarterly
53 , 17-40.
29 Volgy, T. a. (1980). Television Entertainment Programming and Sociopolitical Attitudes . Journalism Quarterly 57
, 150-155.
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attempt to change the public’s opinion. However there are other scholars who believe that the
news media’s influence on public opinion is not unlimited, and is mediated by other
factors, including prior knowledge and social networks.30
Robinson and Levy researched
variables that influence public understanding of major news and find that while exposure to the
news media enhances comprehension of the news; interpersonal dialogue is also of great essence
in public awareness and understanding of the news.31
Price and Zaller analyzed the importance
of prior knowledge, along with exposure to the media and interpersonal conversation, in their
study of the aspects that affect news recall.32
For Zaller opinions are flexible and can be
relatively easily influenced, particularly in areas where people do not have significant personal
involvement. He writes voter awareness of specific issues is quite low, therefore susceptibility to
persuasion is high.33
Doris Graber would also agree with the previous statement. This means that the public is
not only convinced by the media but also by their social grouping. If people do not have
previous knowledge of the political issues they are more susceptible for misperceptions.34
Graber
slightly agrees with Kull et al that specific news sources can shape the public’s opinion.
Additionally Grasnovetter and Cialdini also believe that social influence shapes opinion, they
write people are often persuaded by those they personally interact with.35
Bartels remarks that
the media’s impact on public opinion is mediated by the political views of the public. Bartels
finds the media’s ability to influence public opinion limited because of these prior opinions held
by individuals.36
The above mentioned scholars mostly agree that the media can shape public opinion but
they also take into account individual’s social factor that plays a major role in shaping an
opinion. Hermann, Tetlock and Visser who wrote ‘mass public decisions to go to war’ focus
30
Kellner, D. (2004). Media Propaganda and Spectacle in the War on Iraq: a Critique of U.S. Broadcasting Networks.
Cultural Studies- Critical Methodologies 4 , 329-340.
31 Levy, J. P. (1986). Interpersonal Communication and News Comprehension. Public Opinion Quarterly 50 , 160-
175.
32 Price, V. a. (1993). "Who Gets the News?: Alternative Measures of. Public Opinion Quarterly , 133-164.
33 Zaller, J. (1992). The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: University Press.
34 Doris, G. (1984). Processing the news: How people tame the information tide. New York: Longman.
35 Cialdini, R. (1984). Influence: the psychology of persuasion. New York : Quill.
36 Bartels, L. (1993). Messages received: The political impact of media exposure. American Political Science Review ,
267-285.
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even more than Bartels, Graber, Zaller, Cialdini, etc. on the social aspects of shaping public
opinion.
Hermann, Tetlock and Visser would definitely not agree with the findings of Kull et al.
As Hermann et al focus on “the cognitive –interactionist perspective, in which people adapt
broad predispositions in relatively thoughtful ways to specific foreign problems.”37
The authors
argue that Americans decision to use military force abroad is based on a combination of
dispositional preferences and ideas about the geopolitical situation. Hermann, Tetlock and Visser
conducted a representative national survey and found that “(1) respondent dispositions,
especially isolationism versus internationalism and assertiveness versus accommodativeness,
consistently constrained policy preferences, whereas liberalism- conservatism did not; (2)
features of the geopolitical context- the presence of US interests, relative power, the images of
the adversary’s motivation, and judgments about cultural status- also influenced support for
military intervention; and (3) systematic interactions emerged between dispositions and
geopolitical context.” 38
Kull, Ramsay and Lewis minimally took into account social factors in
their study on misperceptions about the war.
Four of these social factors were demographic: gender, age, household income and
education and the two other were party identification and the intention to vote for the president.
The authors of ‘Misperceptions, the media and the Iraq war’ found that the most powerful factor
was the intention to vote for President Bush and the second most powerful factor was one’s
primary source of network news. The third most powerful factor was to vote for the Democratic
nominee and the fourth most powerful factor was education. According to Kull et al those who
had no college education compared to those who had at least some college education had more
misperceptions. Age was a weak factor, with older people being slightly less likely to
misperceive.39
For Kull, Ramsay and Lewis all other factors such as gender, party identification,
level of attention to news, income and region of the country were not significant.
Yankelovich would agree with the findings of Kull et al. Yankelovich researched what
Americans really think about US foreign. He noticed that demographic differences appear when
shaping a political opinion. Yankelovich survey’s results showed that “women are more
concerned than men about the war in Iraq, senior citizens worry more than young Americans
37
Hermann, R. K., Tetlock, P. E., & S.Visser, P. (1999). Mass Public decisions to go to war: A cognitive interactionist
framework. The American Political Science review , 553-573.
38 Id.
39 Kull, R. a. (2003-2004). Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly , 569-598.
13
about the country’s debt burden—but they do not account for the biggest splits. More than
anything, it is party affiliation or political partisanship that explains the starkest polarizations.”40
B. Partisan Polarization
It is said that the Iraq war and President George W. Bush have provoked the most
polarized partisan responses of any war or president since the advent of scientific polling.41
Yankelovich reads from his surveys that Republicans are highly supportive of the Bush
administration and their attitude towards the war on terror. Republicans also believe “that U.S.
relations with other nations are sound and well conducted, they have great confidence in
Washington’s ability to export democracy, and they think that the United States is improving the
lives of people in poor countries and fully living up to its ideal of justice.”42
The survey of Kull
et al showed that those who intended to vote for Bush had more misperceptions is somehow
congruent with the theory of Yankelovich because Republicans support the war on terror and
therefore believed anything that was presented in the media. It seems as if Republicans suffered
from cognitive dissonance.
Kull, Ramsay and Lewis concluded from their research that the individual source of news
and voter intention increased the probability of having more misperceptions about the war on
terror. Gary Jacobson, professor politics at University of California San Diego would also concur
with the fact that voter intention was key for being perceptive for misperceptions. In his essay
‘Perception, Memory and the Partisan Polarization of Opinion on the Iraq War’ he states that the
analysis of the results of three surveys specifically designed to explore the most polarized
partisan responses in the Iraq war “shows that modes of
motivated reasoning, including motivated skepticism and selective perception, memory, and
exposure have all contributed to the emergence of unusually wide divisions of opinion between
ordinary Republicans and Democrats on the war and the president.”43
As previously said, Kull et al proved that the intention to vote for the President was
highly influential for having misperceptions about the Iraq war. They found that “supporters of
the President are more likely to have misperceptions than are those who oppose him, the
intention to vote for the President is the single most powerful predictor of misperceptions.”44
“Of
the three key misperceptions- evidence of Al Qaeda links found, WMD found, and word public
opinion favors war- those who said they would vote for the President were far more likely to
misperceive. Those who vote for the President held misperceptions 45 percent of the time and
40
Yankelovich, D. (2005). Poll Positions: What America Really thinks of Foreign Policy. . Foreign Affairs 84 (5) , 2-17.
41 Jacobson, G. (n.d.). Perception, Memory, and the Partisan Polarization of Opinion on the Iraq War.
42 Yankelovich, D. (2005). Poll Positions: What America Really thinks of Foreign Policy. . Foreign Affairs 84 (5) , 2-17.
43 Jacobson, G. (n.d.). Perception, Memory, and the Partisan Polarization of Opinion on the Iraq War.
44 Kull, R. a. (2003-2004). Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly , 569-598.
14
Democrats supporters held misperceptions 17 percent of the time.”45
Jacobson would totally
agree with these findings. According to him Republicans “tended to misperceive, ignore or
consciously reject information undermining the war’s initial justifications”.46
Those with
the deepest devotion to Bush were most likely to continue to
accept the war’s initial justifications, that Iraq possessed WMD and that Saddam Hussein was
involved in 9/11.
The previous is confirmed by Kull, Ramsay and Lewis who found that when respondents
were asked to characterize the relationship between the previous Iraq government and Al Qaeda
29 percent of Bush supporters said ‘Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks’ and only 15
percent of democrats believed this. One can not help but notice that the war on terror caused a
wide gap between Republicans and Democrats. Jacobson agrees with the former. He states that
such party differences in opinion are unique in American history. This did not happen in the case
of U.S. engagements in Korea, Vietnam, the Person Gulf, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Therefore
he concludes that in the case of the war on terror “those partisans showing such signs of
motivated reasoning express by far the most divergent opinions on the war and the president.”47
Today, Americans are not as sharply split along partisan lines in relation to US foreign policy
and Iraq.
C. Framing and Priming
Framing and priming prevailed very much during the war on terror. According to Barbara
Allen, Paula O'Loughlin, Amy Jasperson, John L. Sullivan framing “describes the process of
placing information into a context of preconscious symbolism.”48
Gamson and Modigliani define
framing as the central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of
events.49
Priming “concerns the unobtrusive activation of attitude or knowledge constructs stored
in memory.”50
“In both framing and priming, the unconscious or pre- conscious references
stimulate conscious judgments that might not have occurred if information had been framed or
attitudes had been primed differently.”51
45
Kull, R. a. (2003-2004). Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War. Political Science Quarterly , 569-598.
46 Jacobson, G. (n.d.). Perception, Memory, and the Partisan Polarization of Opinion on the Iraq War.
47 Id.
48 Allen, B., O'Loughlin, P., Jasperson, A., & Sullivan, J. L. (1994). The Media and the Gulf War: Framing, Priming, and
the Spiral of Silence. Polity, Vol. 27, No. 2 , 255-284.
49 Gamson, William A. and Andre Modigliani (1989): “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A
Constructionist Approach,” American Journal of Sociology 95: 1-37.
50 Id.
51 Id.
15
One can assume that in the case of the Iraq war people would have had different attitudes
towards the war if they had not been framed and primed. Most frames are created by the media
though in the case of the war on terror the frames were not created by the media but by the
government. However, the media is still guilty of priming in the coverage on the war on terror. It
is the media’s responsibility to be critical of the government and catch their frames. In the
coverage of the war on terror the media was not critical and passed these frames on to the public.
In order for the American government to seek support from its people they created frames
to justify the invasion. According to Calabrese who wrote the article ‘US Media and the
Justification of the Iraq War’ “in departing from the traditional principles of a “just war” theory,
which demands that military action be taken only in self-defense, the U.S. government’s policy
in its war against Iraq was preemptive, the logic being that the perceived risk of Iraqi aggression
toward the United States ought to be avoided by attacking first.”52
For Calabrese of course, the
obvious question became what evidence was there of imminent danger that should justify an
attack?53
Rather, the challenge has been all along a matter of how to sell the war to the American
people. Therefore frames were created. The misperceptions that Kull et al can be described as the
frames the US government created to justify their invasion of Iraq.
Thus, one could say that links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda is the first frame.
The second frame being that WMD were found in Iraq and the third frame being that the world
public opinion supported the Iraq war. These are the principal arguments offered for why the
United States should invade Iraq. Calabrese confirms that the frames created were that “the
regime of Saddam Hussein had continued to store, produce, and find ways to further develop the
capacity to produce biological, chemical, and nuclear “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs)
and the other being that there were covert links between the Iraqi government and members of
the Al Qaeda network, perhaps even implicating Iraq in the terrorist attacks on U.S. targets on
September 11, 2001.”54
On February 5, 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the UN
Security Council and presented what he typified as undeniable evidence of the existence of
WMDs in Iraq and of links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s government.55
Powell said
that the content of his speech relied heavily on Tony Blair’s MI-6 report of the British
Government. However, there is proof that MI6 did not produce such a report. MI6 even leaked
on the same day a report denying that there was evidence of WMD in Iraq and denied that there
were links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. According to Rampton and Stauber, all that
52
Calabrese, A. (2005). Casus Belli U.S. Media and the Justification of the Iraq War. Television and New Media 6 (2)
, 153-175.
53 Id.
54 Id.
55 Powell, C. (2003, February 5). Remarks to the UN Security Council. Retrieved November 29, 2009, from State.gov:
www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm.
16
mattered was “that the Bush team, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice
President Dick Cheney, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, continue to insist that
there was a connection.” 56
Due to the fact that Bush and his team continued repeating these frames in speeches and
the media passively passed on this information without critique the public began to accept it as
true or stopped caring if it was untrue. As an example President Bush stated in a speech in
October 2002, concluding that Saddam Hussein was “a man who, in my judgment, would like to
use al Qaeda as a forward army… The danger Saddam Hussein poses reaches across the world”
(Bush 2003.”57
According to Calabrese, during this period, such claims were disputed, and the
evidence used to support them was discredited before, during, and since the U.S. invasion of
Iraq.58
In 2004 when the Iraq war was officially declared over the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (CEIP) released a detailed report analyzing the prewar evidence that was
available to all the international intelligence communities.
They found that the claims the Bush administration made were completely irrelevant as
Iraq had given up their nuclear program many years ago and Osama Bin Laden and Saddam
Hussein refuted each other. Most of the information about Iraq dated from the second Gulf War.
The CEIP has been able to prove that the Bush administration had planned attacks on Iraq long
before 9/11. It is proved that the war strategy was developed by a group of Republican
neoconservatives. Yet, the Bush administration kept up these frames all through the war. Hiebert
who wrote Public relations and propaganda in framing the Iraq war confirmed by saying: “The
government framed the issues, story line, and slogans to serve its purposes. Embedding
journalists, staging showy briefings, emphasizing visual and electronic media, and making good
television out of it were all important to fighting the war;”59
thus, more misperceptions.
The media continuously covered these frames, beginning with the reporting of the
invasion of Iraq. Network television cancelled regular programs to cover the war during its early
days. There was continuous coverage of the war and its unfolding events such as the capture of
Saddam Hussein and the military fight with Hussein’s sons. The news media only focused on
this news and made other local, national or international news seem completely irrelevant, which
is an obvious example of media priming.
56
Sheldon, R., & Stauber, J. (2004, July 12). Trading on Fear. Retrieved November 30, 2009, from UMI:
http://proquest.umi.com 57
Id.
58 Calabrese, A. (2005). Casus Belli U.S. Media and the Justification of the Iraq War. Television and New Media 6 (2)
, 153-175.
59 Hiebert, R. E. (2003 ). Public relations and propaganda in framing the Iraq war: a preliminary review. Public
Relations Review 29 , 243-255.
17
Iyengar and Kinder in their study of news priming “demonstrate how focusing attention
on some news stories while ignoring others influences how the public judges political leaders.”60
Iyengar and Kinder analyzed how people evaluate the President’s overall performance. They find
that when people evaluate the President's overall performance, subjects receiving the most
attention in news coverage are given more weight. Thus, Iyengar and Kinder conclude that the
very standards used to evaluate political leaders can themselves be strongly influenced by media
priming.61
In other words influenced by the amount of attention the media has given the issue.
Accordingly, in the case of the Iraq war the government created the frames and these were
passed to public and as Kull et al claim it helped shape the public’s opinion to support the war on
terror. The primes created by the media focused solely on the Iraq war and therefore one can
assume that this also helped reinforce the public’s support for the second Gulf war.
However Foyle who wrote the article ‘Leading the public to war? The influence of
American public opinion on the Bush administration decision to go to war in Iraq’ would not
agree with the claim that priming was solely done by the media. Foyle believes that the
American Government “attempted to persuade public opinion to support the use of force in Iraq,
principally by using references to WMD to prime public opinion.”62
For Foyle the WMD’s frame
primed the public opinion. Hence, one can assume that both priming and framing were
constructed by the Bush administration and passed passively through the media which therefore
caused most of the American people to have misperceptions of the matter in question. Jacobs
and Shapiro believe that “leaders ‘prime’ preexisting attitudes by ‘raising the priority and the
weight that individuals assign to particular attitudes already stored in their memories’”.63
For Entman, “to succeed, they need to get the media to ‘frame’ and issue for the public
by ‘selecting and highlighting some facets of events or issues, and making connections among
them so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution’”64
Foyle clearly
60
Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. R. (1987). News That Matters: Television and American Public Opinion. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
61 Id.
62 Foyle, D. C. (2004). Leading the Public To War? The Influence of American Public Opinion on the administration
decision to go to war in Iraq. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 16 (3) , 269-295.
63 Jacobs, L., & Shapiro, R. (2000). Politicians dont pander: Political manipulation and the loss of democratic
responsiveness. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
64 Entman, R. (2004). Projections of Power: Framing news, public opinion, and US foreign policy . Chicago: Chicago
University Press.
18
writes that the “Bush government largely worked to lead public opinion and to prime public
attitudes on Iraq around a continually narrowing range of policy options.”65
Throughout the news military briefers as well as Iraqi based American journalists
managed the reporting. Kellner believed that “military commentators on all networks provided
little more than the Pentagon spin of the moment and often repeated gross lies and
propaganda.”66
He said that “a great debate emerged around the embedded reporters and whether
journalists who depended on the protection of the U.S. and British military (600 journalists)*,
lived with the troops, and signed papers agreeing to a rigorous set of restrictions on their
reporting could be objective and critical of their protectors.” 67
For Kellner it was clear from the
beginning “that the embedded reporters were indeed “in bed with” their military escorts, the
reporters presented exultant and triumphant accounts that trumped any paid propagandist.”68
As a result the media helped shape the public opinion of the war by continuously
presenting those three frames with no presentation of alternative views. As in the first Gulf War,
“the continuous, repetitious, redundant, and unbalanced nature of media coverage contributed to
the framing and priming of the war.”69
Shanto Iyengar documents the effects of such framing in
television news, examining responses to news reports categorized as either "episodic" (reports
that focus on specific events or particular cases) or "thematic" (reports that focus on the broader
context for the events or cases that may be presented).70
In order to create misperceptions in the
case of the Iraq war only thematic frames were used.
Kull, Ramsay and Lewis assumption that the media shaped the public opinion on the
main source of media information shaped the public’s opinion on the war on terror could be
65
Foyle, D. C. (2004). Leading the Public To War? The Influence of American Public Opinion on the administration
decision to go to war in Iraq. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 16 (3) , 269-295.
66 Kellner, D. (2004). Media Propaganda and Spectacle in the War on Iraq: a Critique of U.S. Broadcasting Networks.
Cultural Studies- Critical Methodologies 4 , 329-340.
67 Id.
68 Id.
* Hiebert, R. E. (2003 ). Public relations and propaganda in framing the Iraq war: a preliminary review. Public
Relations Review 29 , 243-255. (248)
69 Allen, B., O'Loughlin, P., Jasperson, A., & Sullivan, J. L. (1994). The Media and the Gulf War: Framing, Priming, and
the Spiral of Silence. Polity, Vol. 27, No. 2 , 255-284.
70 Id.
19
widely rejected by many scholars. Cohen, for example believes that “the press may not be
successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in
telling its readers what think about”.71
For McCombs et al. and Wanta the media tell us what the
issues of the day are and focus the public’s agenda on specific events. 72
IV. Conclusion
Throughout the years people have shifted from using the print media towards using
electronic media. Televised medium are much more biased and do not provide in depth analyses
of subject matters. The public accepts bias for truths and are therefore much more susceptible for
misperceptions. The public should become more knowledgable about how to process information
retrieved from the media because the government will continue to frame and prime issues. It is
therefore the media’s responsibility to be alert and responsible. It is the media’s responsibility to
uncover deceptions. However this will be a long fight because embedding journalists, briefings
and making good TV entertainment out of the news is today’s the standard.
71
Cohen, B. (1963). The Press and Foreign Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
72 McCombs, E, M., Shaw, D. L., & L.Weaver, D. (1997). Communication and Democracy: Exploring the intellectual
frontiers in agenda setting theory. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Wayne, W. (1997). The public and the
national agenda: How people learn about imoportant issues. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
20
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