The Real War Will Never Get on Television

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an analysis of battle and casualty imagery in television coverage of the 2003 Iraq War. A team of three graduate coders and two professors analyzed 200 hours of coverage aired from March 20 (the beginning of the war) through April 9 (the day the government of Saddam Hussein was deposed). Ten hours a day on three channels – CNN, Fox News Channel, and ABC – were coded: 7:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. (to capture highly rated morning shows), and 1:00 p.m.- 8:00 p.m. Results show that the networks presented an almost entirely bloodless war to viewers, emphasizing the “video game” aspects of technical wizardry of American military power far more than the human ramifications of that power. This coverage is compared with that of earlier American wars, and implications for effects and future research are discussed