Coverage Of War Research Articles

An Analysis of Ian McEwan’s Saturday From the Perspective of Space

This paper aims to analyze the spatial narrative of Ian McEwan’s Saturday in terms of physical space, social space, mental space and textual space. Through the spatial images of the protagonist’s home, the city square, and the nursing home, McEwan shows the strained relationship between him and his surroundings. By highlighting the prevalence of media’s coverage of the forthcoming Iraq war, McEwan constructs a social space that is fraught with chaos and anxiety. By depicting the protagonist’s spiritual space influenced by commodity fetishism and mass media, McEwan underscores the subtlety of intangible mental control and the consequent psychasthenia. By employing the writing strategy of stream of consciousness and the settings of multiple space types, McEwan reflects the loss of social authenticity and urbanites’ lack of sense of security in the post 9/11 era.

Book Review: Pauline Frederick Reporting: A Pioneering Broadcaster Covers the Cold War, by Marilyn S. Greenwald

Marilyn S. Greenwald Pauline Frederick Reporting: A Pioneering Broadcaster Covers the Cold War. Lincoln: Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2014. 271 pp.Pauline Frederick, the distinguished broadcaster and true pioneer for women in radio and television news who died in 1990, was long overdue for a biography. Hence, Greenwald's book fills a gap, not only in the history of women in broadcasting but also for an important era when broadcast news grew from nascent novelty to its Golden Age as a global information source. The subtitle references Frederick's coverage of the Cold War, but Pauline Frederick Reporting covers much more.The book documents a career that began in the mid-1920s with Frederick's high school newspaper and occasional contributions to her hometown Harrisburg (PA) Evening News, and continued through a distinguished career covering mostly politics and international affairs first for newspapers and news services, then in radio and television. Along the way, the book notes, Frederick achieved many milestones: first network news reporter, first female head of the U.N. Correspondents Association, first woman to win a national duPont award for reporting, first woman to broadcast news from China to the United States, first female anchor for national convention coverage (on radio in 1956), and first woman to moderate a presidential debate (between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976).As a lesson in journalism history, the book serves as an eye-opening reminder of the struggles women faced in establishing a career in news generally and broadcast news in particular. At the newspaper in Harrisburg, Frederick's main opportunity came as a fill-in for the society editor. In the 1930s, working at the predecessor for U.S. News & World Report, she wrote under the byline P.A. Frederick to downplay her gender. According to the book, in 1934, Frederick made US$2,400, less than half the average of (male) full-time reporter's salary.Frederick was repeatedly told not to pursue a career in the then-new medium of radio because a woman's voice didn't carry authority. (Much later, in her television career, she would endure criticism of her looks.) When Frederick did get her first break in radio in 1938, it was as an editorial assistant to a man with a print background and resonant voice who was delivering short news broadcasts for the NBC Blue network (later ABC). Frederick began her own on-air career in 1939, hosting a program called Let's Talk It Over, in which she would interview the wives of diplomats and politicians. A talented and enterprising multi-media journalist long before the term came into vogue, Frederick would turn her radio interviews into articles for The Washington Evening Star.After Frederick's unsuccessful attempts to obtain credentials as a foreign correspondent to cover World War II, her chance eventually came in mid-1945 when she signed on for a trip with a military air transport unit that was resupplying Allied bases in China and other countries. The next year, she returned to Europe as a freelancer to cover the post-war devastation and Nuremburg trials, earning as little as US$25 per story and facing the problem of editors who, Greenwald writes, were not interested in negative coverage of ongoing war-related issues.The book traces the trajectory of Frederick's career covering the United Nations, first in radio and then in television. …

“Boys Are Running off to the Wars by Scores”: Promoting Masculinity and Conquest in the Coverage of the Mexican-American War

Moses Yale Beach, publisher of the New York Sun, and James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, promoted the Mexican-American War through illustrations that linked conquest with the fulfillment of certain masculine ideals. Both were expansionists who wanted the United States to take Mexican land as spoils of war. But they differed in opinion on how much territory the United States should claim. Beach believed it best to take only the sparsely populated northern portion, whereas Bennett advocated conquering Mexico in its entirety. Consequently, there are important differences in the types of illustrations they published with their war reports that reflect their positions on land acquisition and its connection to the fulfillment of masculine ideals.

Reporting Conflict: Coverage of The Third Gaza War by The Times of India & The Hindu

The Israel-Palestine conflict has long been a headline seizer. All over the world, news media has covered the issue extensively and with much vigour. Indian media has also been instrumental in providing the conflict a reasonable amount of coverage. It is expected from news media not to take sides, and more so in reporting war and conflicts; and report objectively, that is, to report the occurrence as it happens. However, media around the world are blamed for not covering the conflict accurately and objectively. There have been innumerable number of complaints to media for being cockeyed in their coverage of the conflict, and not raising fundamental, but highly significant, questions. This paper makes an attempt to find out how Indian media covered the Israel-Palestine conflict. Using both quantitative and qualitative techniques, the study analyses the coverage of two leading Indian English newspapers, viz., the Times of India and the Hindu.

Book Review: A Press Divided: Newspaper Coverage of the Civil War, by David B. Sachsman (Ed.)

David B. Sachsman (Ed.) A Press Divided: Coverage of the Civil War . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. 391 pp.A Press Divided is a strong collection of articles first presented as conference papers that examine the role of the prior, during, and after the War. The purpose, says Sachsman, is determine the influence of on public opinion, the pictures in the heads of people North and and around the world (p. ix). As the editor of the richly sourced work, he holds the George R. West, Jr., Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Sachsman also serves as director of the annual symposium on the l9th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression. In introduction, Sachsman stresses the influence papers had on the War and how sharply divided that was, both politically and regionally. The power of the press was feared, and President Abraham Lincoln and his Republican government turned this fear into action by arresting editors and suppressing hundreds of newspapers (p. x). The question Sachsman and colleagues pose is whether or not the divisions among the actually set the agenda for the civil war (p. ix).The book is divided into three sections. Part I: Splitting a Nation examines coverage of the presidential election of 1860. Part II: Covering the Conflict explores newspaper coverage of the Civil War, including political cartoons and photography capturing the war. Part III: Dissension and Suppression North and South analyzes the divide among both Northern and Southern as well as the treatment of dissenters by both sides (p. xiii).Editing a book about the Civil War, before and after, is a monumental task, so each author has done an extraordinary job referencing, sourcing, and elaborating on their respective areas. From David W. Bulla's Newspaper Coverage of the Rise of Lincoln in 1860: Cooper Union, the Republican Convention and the Election to Wendy Swanberg's Ex Parte McCardle and the First Amendment During Reconstruction, the authors include editorials, headlines, commentaries, cartoons, and disturbing photographs capturing the war.In Thomas Robinson's 'Just Before a Mighty Earthquake': Secession Crisis in Muscogee County, Georgia, a quote is referenced by the editor of the Columbus Daily Times, 2 days before ballots were cast (November 9, 1860) in the presidential election-where Lincoln was a shoe-in:Let us not be deceived. Let us not be worshippers of a Union, whose spirit, whose life, whose vitality has departed! Let us act like men. Let us be equals. Let us erect, if necessary, a government for ourselves where the light of liberty will forever shine, and where the demon of abolitionism will never raise head. (p. 37)And in Father Abraham, Mammy and Aunty Abe: Gender in Civil War Cartoons of Abraham Lincoln, author Andrea Foroughi takes us into depictions,distortions of character, and portraits of our 16th president. Foroughi says,Over the course of Lincoln's presidency, in at least six cartoons that included him [Lincoln], artists depicted advisors, associates, or others as female. The tall, lean president was juxtaposed favorably against pudgy, passive predecessor in two early cartoons. Of the four other cartoons in which Lincoln appeared with men in women's dress, Lincoln's strength as a leader was called into question in three cases in 1871 and 1863. …

Children and Terrorism and commentaries

Children and Terrorism and commentaries

Book Review: A Press Divided: Newspaper Coverage of the Civil War, edited by David B. Sachsman

A Press Divided: Newspaper Coverage of the Civil War . David B. Sachsman, ed. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 2014. 416 pp. $54.95 hbk.Eighteen essays that grew out of the Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression in Chattanooga, Tennessee, bring a fresh perspective on the role of newspapers during the Civil War. Based mainly on content analyses, the essays are roughly divided into three areas: coverage of the 1860 election and the subsequent secession crisis, newspaper accounts of the conflict itself, and dissension and suppression in the North and South.The works cover such diverse topics as contemporary characterizations of George Armstrong Custer, feminine portrayals of Abraham Lincoln, and newspaper accounts of the views of Union soldiers. Particularly interesting and relevant today are essays that explore the limitations of press freedom during times of crisis. Together the works grapple with the question of whether the press during the Civil War was instrumental in shaping public opinion or merely a reflection of it.Many of the essay writers are former journalists and the essays are readable and, at times, even artful. The collection begins with David Bulla's essay on the newspaper coverage of Lincoln's rise and the 1860 election. He finds that while newspapers in Chicago and New York pushed Lincoln onto the national stage, Democratic newspapers, especially in the South, largely ignored his ascendancy. Debra Reddin van Tuyll focuses her study on the southern press, noting the variations in editorial positions after Lincoln's election and the extent to which the papers united once secession seemed inevitable. Thomas Robinson looks at the newspaper coverage of the secession crisis in one Georgia county and finds papers divided over the issue. Likewise, Erika J. Pribanic-Smith found division when she studied newspapers in Missouri. Despite Missouri's position as a border state, she found the newspapers were overwhelmingly Unionist.In the section on how newspapers covered the Civil War itself, Andrea Foroughi argues that cartoons featuring Abraham Lincoln dressed in women's clothing reveal not only what the cartoonists thought about Lincoln, but also about what they believed about gender roles of the time. Stephen R. Duncan's contribution to the collection is a biographical essay of Sylvanus Cadwallader, a New York Herald correspondent who enjoyed close access to Ulysses S. Grant. Duncan finds within the work of Cadwallader the makings of a new breed of reporter who did not merely espouse the party line but relied on personal interactions and multiple sourcing.Dianne Bragg considers the role of Tennessee newspapers in helping create a southern national identity. She concludes that newspapers in the cities generally remained faithful to the southern cause whereas those papers in rural areas returned to reporting community interests as time went on.James E. Mueller investigates the contemporary press coverage of George Armstrong Custer and finds that though the Boy General would become a cultural icon after his defeat at Little Big Horn, during the Civil War he was barely noticed. …

The ‘living room war’ in the escalation period: Romance, irony, and the narrative ambivalence of tragedy in Vietnam War era photojournalism

A scholarly consensus suggests that the press largely followed public opinion in its coverage of the Vietnam War, only becoming critical after the US public turned against the conflict in Fall 1967. A similar consensus holds for photojournalists, whose work is found to be generally uncritical of the war. This scholarship offers little valuation, however, of the performance of photojournalists alongside the decline of public support for the war during its escalation from 1965 to 1967. In this article, the author reexamines this consensus through case study-based criticism of photoessays by Henri Huet, Catherine Leroy, and David Douglas Duncan, and suggests that changing conventions for the representation of US casualties could have contributed to the emergence of the climate of controversy surrounding the war. The author examines the visual narratives present in this photoessay as well as audience reactions, and argues that the ambivalent juxtaposition of romantic and ironic conventions for telling tragic stories allowed Vietnam era photojournalism to be used to support arguments on either side of the debate.

Fanning the Flames? how Media Coverage of a Price War Affects Retailers, Consumers, and Investors

This article explores how media coverage of a price war affects customer, retailer, and investor reactions over time. Using data covering a Dutch supermarket price war (2003–2005), the authors find that price reductions, especially deep reductions, trigger media coverage of the price conflict. This sets off a chain of reactions. Press messages have a significant effect on market share and abnormal stock returns, beyond retailers' own price and advertising. Importantly, this study uncovers striking asymmetries regarding the kind of coverage to which stakeholders react: whereas consumers only respond to the tone of price-related press coverage, retailers and investors only react to its quantity. Next, media coverage feeds back into the retailers' pricing actions: more media coverage triggers new price cuts in addition to those dictated by competitive reactions. As such, media coverage triggers a deeper spiral of price cuts, intensifying the competitive price battle. However, as the price war progresses, media coverage becomes less frequent and less favorable, which decelerates the downward price spiral.

A Press divided: newspaper coverage of the Civil War

A Press divided: newspaper coverage of the Civil War

Visual coverage of the 2006 Lebanon War: Framing conflict in three US news magazines

The 2006 Lebanon War presented a rare opportunity to explore how the three major US news magazines visually covered a distant conflict in which the US was not directly involved. Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report faced the challenge of how to fairly report a conflict that was dominated by one side – Israel. A quantitative content analysis revealed that the military conflict and human interest frames dominated visual coverage of the seven-week war. By emphasizing the war’s negative impact on Lebanon and its people, the news magazines provided a largely American audience with a proportional visual representation of the conflict. Only 11 percent of the images showed the injured and dead, which is consistent with other war studies. This article discusses how the news magazines visually framed the war, why images of Hezbollah and protests were rarely seen, and why many casualty images included women and children.

Brian Williams and the Perils of the Use of Autobiographical Me mory in Research

Brian Williams, an American journalist who had for ten years served as anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News was recently suspended for six months for misrepresent[ing] events which he claimed occurred during his coverage of the Iraq War in 2003. While many have questioned why Williams, a well-known and widely respected broadcast journalist, would have fabricated the degree of risk he faced in his war coverage, few have considered that he might have unwittingly, rather than deliberately, misrepresented events in the past. Autobiographical memory, however, is highly susceptible to a variety of influences which can create false memories. While researchers have, for obvious reasons, created benign memories, cases exist in which individuals have been tried for crimes which in retrospect seem ludicrous. I argue that, whatever the reason for Brian Williams’ exaggeration of the level of threat which he faced in Iraq in 2003, the implications of such exaggerations for communication research are sobering.

‘The silence of the Sphinx’: The delay in organising media coverage of World War II

None of those New Zealand men who served as official war correspondents in World War II are alive today to tell their stories. It is left to the media historian to try and piece together their lives and actions, always regretting that research had not started sooner. Sadly there is more information available about World War I and the life and actions of Malcolm Ross, the country’s first official war correspondent, than there is about New Zealand’s World War II correspondents. Nevertheless, remembering the work of these journalists is important, so this is a first attempt at chronicling the circumstances surrounding the appointment of the first of the official correspondents, John Herbert Hall and Robin Templeton Miller, for the 1939-45 conflict. The story of the appointment of men to cover the war, whether as press correspondents, photographers, artists or broadcasters, is one of ‘absurd delays’ which were not resolved until nearly two years of the war had passed.

David B. Sachsman, editor. A Press Divided: Newspaper Coverage of the Civil War.

Journal Article David B. Sachsman, editor. A Press Divided: Newspaper Coverage of the Civil War. Get access David B. Sachsman, editor. A Press Divided: Newspaper Coverage of the Civil War.New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2014. Pp. xxv, 391. $54.95. The American Historical Review, Volume 119, Issue 5, December 2014, Page 1833, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/119.5.1833 Published: 01 December 2014

Chinese-style pragmatic objectivity in war reporting

China plays an increasing role in the wars and conflicts around the world with its expanding political and economic interests overseas and its diplomatic role in international affairs. More and more Chinese journalists go to the frontlines overseas to cover distant conflicts for domestic audiences. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 Chinese correspondents who have covered conflicts outside China, this study examines Chinese journalists' perceptions and reflections on objectivity in the war zones. The author adopts a term of Chinese-style pragmatic objectivity to mean that objectivity is a convenient approach for Chinese journalists to do war journalism in the field. At the level of objectivity-as-a-value, objectivity is defined as a pragmatic value and a practical ritual for Chinese journalists to do news within the scope they can reach, to protect themselves from criticisms, and to justify their version of the truth. It promotes allegiance and patriotism. At the level of objectivity-as-a-practice, objectivity in war coverage is compromised by China's foreign policies, military constraints, the press's political orientations and editorial polices, and journalists' personal experiences and values. Chinese journalists use Chinese-style objectivity to negotiate their roles in the power struggle with the state, foreign militaries, the newsroom, and journalists.

Digital Media and Reporting Conflict: Blogging and the BBC’s Coverage of War and Terrorism

Digital Media and Reporting Conflict: Blogging and the BBC’s Coverage of War and Terrorism

Explaining the unexplainable: designing a national strategy on classroom communication concerning the 22 July terror attack in Norway

BackgroundIn the context of crisis and disasters, school-aged children are a vulnerable group with fewer coping resources than adults. The school is a key arena for preventive interventions; teachers can be given a key role in large-scale school-based interventions following a man-made or natural disaster.ObjectivesThis paper describes a practical example of designing a school-based population-level intervention.MethodsThe preventive measures were delivered as a national communication strategy between teachers and pupils aged 6–19 concerning the terror attack on 22 July 2011 in Norway. The strategy is based on principles from international research.ResultsThe presentation contributes to the discussion of defining the teacher's role in school-based crisis interventions and dealing with high-intensity media coverage of war, terror, and catastrophes.ConclusionsThe presentation provides educational and psychological perspectives on how teachers can take an active role in helping pupils to deal with such events through two approaches: the therapeutic approach, to restore calm and feelings of safety; and the educational approach, to foster reflection and deeper understanding.

Afghanistan War Coverage More Negative over Time

More than 1,100 articles discussing the Afghanistan War were examined for a 10-year period. The tone and depiction of the U.S. military became more negative over time. More articles about Afghanistan were published in 2009 and 2010 when the number of U.S. casualties increased.

Book Review: Picturing Afghanistan: The Photography of Foreign Conflict, by Paul Verschueren

Picturing Afghanistan: The Photography of Foreign Conflict. Paul Verschueren. New York: Hampton Press, 2012. 214 pp. $49.50.Photography of war has been a theme throughout recorded history of photojournal- ism. Beginning with photographers like Matthew Brady, continuing through Eddie Adams and Robert Capa, and presently through James Nachtwey, photographers have been documenting complexities of war for nearly two hundred years. In his book Picturing Afghanistan, Paul Verschueren expands discussion of war photography beyond photojournalism into realms of public affairs, psychological operations (PSYOP), press, and photo book, ultimately showing there are no strong boundaries between photography used in warfare and photography about war. The most important point he makes, however, occurs early in book: All modern wars are 'wars of images.' Despite some focus on weaponry, soldiers, and economics, it is images that bring war to breakfast table and living room. The war in Afghanistan was no exception.Throughout book, Verschueren discusses concepts such as agenda-setting power of photography with people who have no direct experience of depicted real- ity; framing; perception of elements within messages; attention-getting power of photography as confirmed through eye-tracking studies; and even future of newspapers and their increased use of photography for telling stories with more and bigger photos. He clearly documents changes in photography, including inte- gration of amateur and professional photography that changed coverage of modern wars, especially Afghanistan, the first war of videophone.The author clearly advances discussion of war photography, particularly in light of discussion of PSYOP-propaganda. He accurately and clearly notes that pho- tography has been an important instrument of propaganda since American Civil War and that visual propaganda continued throughout Afghanistan conflict, blur- ring lines between media coverage and pure propaganda. Moreover, he discusses problem with blurring such lines in which pictures present a sanitized view of war, displaying no direct violence, virtually no damage, and almost no wounded or dead. He gives numerous specific examples, including Department of Defense and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) images as well as coverage of women and children intended to create empathy among readers and viewers.Through analysis of European newspapers-all important shapers of public opin- ion, Verschueren shows that media outlets framed conflict in Afghanistan in ways similar to those in public affairs and PSYOP at least partially because media outlets increasingly depend on provided images. He expands relationship between media coverage, public affairs, and PSYOP by discussing close relationships that form when photographers are embedded with military combatants for between ten and thirty days, something that began after Gulf War. While he says such close contact resulted in more coverage of conflicts, it came with a price, narrowing scope of coverage as photographers relied on military officials and mission for stories, failing to cover both sides of conflict and sometimes struggling with close, interpersonal conflict they had with warriors. …

Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991 by Jeanne Colleran (review)

Reviewed by: Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991 by Jeanne Colleran Jenna L. Kubly Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991. By Jeanne Colleran. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; pp. 252. In her own words, Jeanne Colleran’s Theatre and War aims “to investigate how the media, beginning with the Persian Gulf War, has altered political analysis and how this altercation has in turn affected socially critical art” (6)—specifically, dramas written for and produced in “mainstream” British and American theatrical venues (6–7). Although earlier scholarship deals with theatrical representations of other wars, Colleran’s book is among the first to deal exclusively with theatrical works written since 1991 that portray war and its aftermath. Although she both begins and concludes on a hopeful note of “art’s restorative powers” (11), the book’s most significant contribution is a skillful engagement with Baudrillard and a wide range of other theorists who critique the role of the media in the performance of war, followed by an inquiry into the theatrical works that sought to expose the media’s simulations, obfuscations, and biases. Colleran opens by setting forth her overarching approach with a consideration of how the rapid growth in media influenced the perception and presentation of war—the “new semiotic environment” (7). She traces the rise of the media and its power to construct news to the coverage of the First Gulf War in 1991, which marks a “historical juncture” (31), as the images broadcast directly into home televisions “provoke[d] public response and policy response” (14). This shift was evident in the ways in which media, politics, and even military strategy “converged [to] reshape the public sphere” (31). This coverage, Colleran and others argue, changed the way in which the public responded to the war, as the quantity of information did not necessarily equal veracity, leaving the spectator with the difficult task of interpretation. The theatrical works analyzed in the chapters that follow each respond to this evolving task of interpretation, as each work attempts to tell the “truth” about the war, often in conversation with, if not opposition to, mass media’s initial portrayal of the event. Among the forty works discussed are those by well-known playwrights like Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and Harold Pinter alongside less familiar plays, such as Richard Norton-Taylor’s Justifying War and Judith Thompson’s Palace of the End. The book is organized thematically, each chapter considering an aspect of war and its presentation in the media plays that deal with the First Gulf War; dramatic responses to 9/11; sympathetic and historically based dramatic representations of “the enemy”; more abstract and allegorical modes; “war documents” and the reemergence of documentary drama; and plays tied to specific sites—namely Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Afghanistan. Several themes run through Colleran’s analysis: the unresolved legacy of Vietnam; emergent US neoimperialist policies and their ties to a militarized, capitalistic culture; and the possibility of dissent and activism. Just as some plays point to the American past and its influence on political rhetoric, others take an even broader view of history, attempting to counteract the average American’s incomplete understanding of Middle Eastern history and the tendency to view Muslim people stereotypically—both deficiencies, the result of how the media chooses to frame their stories. In cataloging and analyzing the various theatrical responses to 9/11, Colleran argues that many of the earliest dramas tackled fundamental questions like “Why” and “Who,” and in seeking these answers, quickly moved beyond the heroes of 9/11 to instead “interrupt hypernationalist discourse” (104) and investigate how globalization, US dominance, and incorrect assumptions contributed to ongoing instability. Other works take a different angle, seeking to put a face on the “enemy” and their motivations, whether rational or beyond comprehension. Despite staging the terrorist, who might be “another man’s freedom fighter” (115), other plays also depict the constant state of anxiety about terrorists/terrorism in which post-9/11 citizens exist. The images of past acts are part of the constant fear that terrorists create, in that another, more horrific act is both “unprecedented” and yet “already imagined” (120). Finally, a theme that binds these...