Abstract
The 2003 Iraq War was a landmark for real-time news dissemination, with news broadcast by journalists embedded with U.S. troops. The literature indicates that mainstream media reflected the viewpoints of those in power, giving little coverage to anti-war sentiment. This study focuses on press coverage relating to a specific aspect of dissent—protest songs against the 2003 Iraq War. After analyzing the content of articles sourced from mainstream newspapers from both sides of the Atlantic, namely, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Telegraph, the results indicate that from the beginning of this war, anti-war songs were perceived by journalists to be in decline for reasons that were reported to have been linked to the period’s sociopolitical and economic context. The conclusions of the study underscore the value of analyzing news type articles and opinion pieces from newspapers of record.
Highlights
The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States launched the Bush Administration’s War on Terror narrative (Zalman & Clarke, 2009) and the 2003 Iraq War was positioned as the main front in the War on Terror (The White House, 2003)
This study provides a novel perspective on the study of protest music because it analyses the journalistic perception of the protest song phenomenon in relation to the Iraq War 2003
Many articles reported on newsworthy observations, others offered more in-depth analysis, disclosing the practice of artist self-censorship due to fear of a backlash against expressing dissent through song
Summary
The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States launched the Bush Administration’s War on Terror narrative (Zalman & Clarke, 2009) and the 2003 Iraq War was positioned as the main front in the War on Terror (The White House, 2003). In extreme cases, this has even resulted in regime change Such an example is Street’s (2003) discussion of a case study provided by Wicke (1993), who argued that musicians in East Germany became an important catalyst for the collapse of the East German regime because they triggered a series of events after leaking a document to Western media about the exodus of young people from East Germany. Several studies have investigated mainstream media’s coverage of the 2003 Iraq War and the extent to which dissenting voices were represented in the news media. Dardis (2006a) and Cushion (2007) conducted content analyses of mainstream press relating to anti–Iraq War protestors and found evidence of a protest paradigm, a term coined by Chan and Chin-Chuan (1984) to describe a pattern whereby the press delegitimizes and marginalizes protest and dissent. While our findings strongly support the conclusion that the press did not perform as a “watchdog” in the time leading up the Iraq war . . . , the media’s framing behavior was directly in line with its institutional incentives, which do not dictate scrutiny at all times. (p. 441)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
