Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Thursday, April 24, 2003

"Led by the highly tendentious Peter Jennings, ABC’s reporters presented the most adversarial and negative coverage of the American war effort," MRC said.

The Most Horrible: Jennings, Engel, Koppel

"Their reporter in Baghdad, Richard Engel, did the most to play up Iraqi claims of civilian suffering at the hands of Americans while Jennings — more than any other anchor — zeroed in on purported weaknesses and failings in the U.S. effort to win support among liberated Iraqis.

"At the same time, ABC’s Ted Koppel used his position as an embedded reporter to issue lectures about U.S. policy. The war’s swift and victorious conclusion showed that the self-described truth-tellers at ABC weren’t just sanctimonious — they were wrong."

MRC's report was especially harsh in commenting on correspondent Engel, whose reporting must have gladdened the heart of Baghdad Bob. They cite a number of incidents involving Engel, such as his report April 2 on "World News Tonight," when he highlighted the claim that the U.S. had bombed a "maternity hospital."

Engel asserted, "Iraqis are growing increasingly enraged by the mounting damage to civilian sites — including this maternity hospital." After the obligatory video of an injured child, he went to the streets to gather public opinion. "I asked this man if he thinks the war is about liberating him from Saddam’s brutal regime. ‘Liberation?’ he asked me. ‘Who asked for America to liberate us?’"

Nor did MRC's report spare Jennings, who, they note, took every opportunity to publicize the appeasement movement, even to the extent of criticizing Democrats for not opposing Operation Iraqi Freedom.

MRC rated ABC's overall coverage as a D- and gave Jennings an F, which he richly deserved.

CBS

Surprisingly, Media Research Center rated CBS's overall war coverage with a respectable B-. More surprising was the mark Dan Rather earned, despite his obsequious prewar interview with Saddam Hussein: B+.

CBS’s coverage, MRC says, was far superior to ABC’s "with much less gloomy speculation and a greater emphasis on factually reporting battlefield developments; day after day CBS’s Pentagon reporter David Martin gave the most accurate overview of the war’s progress."

MRC cites the contrast between how ABC and CBS handled of the lack of water in embattled Basra:

On March 25, as ABC argued that the U.S. invasion precipitated a water emergency in Basra, the network’s John Donvan dated the loss of water in Basra to "five days" ago, meaning the war caused it, and he outlined the potentially disastrous results: "Day and night, the fighting in Basra has been too intense for aid workers to enter the city. A million people live in Basra, hundreds of thousands of them have been without clean water for five days, the city’s electricity went out last week. The possible consequence: cholera for a start, also diarrhea, which in Iraq often kills young children."

But at CBS, Scott Pelley took the trouble to determine that the water had been "turned off" days before the war started. In Umm Qasr, south of Basra, Pelley asked U.S. Army Maj. James Thorpe: "Major, why do these people not have water?" Thorpe explained: "Basra, it’s a city just north of us, is normally the location where drinking water comes from for these folks here in Umm Qasr. As it turns out, just before the war started, approximately four or five days before it did, the water that normally flows down here via truck was turned off."

Pelley asked, "By who?" Thorpe replied, "Well, basically by the ruling party, the Ba’athist party, and I guess, Saddam Hussein."

About the only sour note in MRC’s examination of CBS was Lesley Stahl’s challenge of the military’s war plan after a mere five days of fighting. She asked a Vietnam veteran: "You fought in Vietnam. Are you getting any feelings of deja vu?"

She went further when she lectured Secretary of State Colin Powell, a general, on military strategy. The exchange bordered on the comical, with Powell playing the straight man to Stahl’s buffoon.

NBC/MSNBC

Neither NBC nor MSNBC performed brilliantly. MRC rated their overall performance as a C+. Anchormen Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams fared better, Brokaw with a B and Williams a B-.

The brightest spot was the work of embedded reporter David Bloom, whose tragic death ended weeks of extraordinary reportage from the front lines.

The low point was the use of National Geographic Explorer’s Peter Arnett, who was heavily featured by MSNBC and NBC during the first week of the war and was the most outrageously biased Baghdad reporter.

Appearing on Iraqi state television March 30, he bragged about the usefulness of his reports to those who would halt the U.S. effort to topple Saddam. "Within the United States, there is growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war. So our reports about civilian casualties here ... help those who oppose the war."

Arnett then praised the "determination" of Iraq’s army, declared the U.S. war plan a "failure" and arrogantly proclaimed that he had warned the Bush administration that Iraq wouldn’t be a pushover.

For that, NBC and MSNBC correctly decided to cease using Arnett’s reports, and National Geographic Explorer fired him. But while the networks distanced themselves from the propaganda Arnett spouted on Iraqi state television, they seemed untroubled by the pro-Iraqi propaganda he spouted on MSNBC and NBC, as Arnett parroted the false claims of Iraqi officials without a trace of professional skepticism.

The most bizarre episode in the coverage by all the networks was the presence of the increasingly strange Keith Olbermann a newly hired anchorman. Olbermann provided what came close to comic relief when he compared a Long Island gas station’s giveaway of $10 in gasoline to vehicles bearing American flags with "suicide bombers" and "human shields." According to Olbermann, all three are examples of "purchased patriotism."

Olbermann suggested that some drivers might have put flags on their cars even if they weren’t trying to show patriotism. "I don’t think I’m going way out on a limb here to assume that somewhere in that block’s long line of drivers near Lake Ronkonkoma waiting for their five free gallons, were a few who weren’t really that gung ho about the war, but just stuck a flag in their windshield wiper to get the gasoline gratis. Unintentional or not, that’s purchased patriotism. And as we are reminded every time we hear about Iraqi human shields and forced suicide bombers, purchased patriotism is one of the things we’re fighting against."

Fox

MRC gave Fox the best grades, a B+ for overall performance. Anchorman Brit Hume scored the only A awarded in the analysis. Shepard Smith also scored high, with a B+.

Wrote MRC’s Brent Baker and Rich Noyes: "Indeed, by refusing to embrace the reflexive skepticism of most of the media elite, FNC’s audience was not misled by the unwarranted second-guessing and negativism that tainted other networks’ war news. On his 6 p.m. ET Special Report with Brit Hume, anchor Brit Hume provided an excellent one-hour summary of the war each night. The Fox anchor with the most face time, Shepard Smith, worked hard to keep the focus of the story exactly where it belonged: in the war zone, with Fox’s embedded battlefield reporters. Those who watched Fox were well-served by the networks’ refusal to fall into the standard traps of repeating liberal conventional wisdom as fact."

CNN

The pioneer cable network got a C+ for its overall performance. Anchorman Wolf Blitzer and Aaron Brown got a B+ and a B- respectively.

According to MRC, overall CNN "was the cable network most preoccupied with ensuring that the relatively few and increasingly inconsequential anti-war protesters were represented in their coverage, even as events disproved the protesters’ premises and predictions. Even after the resistance in Baghdad had collapsed, Iraqis had showered kisses and flowers on troops, and polls showed nearly 80 percent support for the war, some at CNN persisted in describing an America "split" between "pro-war" and anti-war camps. Some split.

On March 22, CNN gave wide coverage of anti-war marches and demonstrations. Beginning just before noon until midnight, CNN ran 38 reports on protests in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But, says MRC, "despite the volume of coverage, and the fact that CNN had a reporter, Maria Hinojosa, dedicated to covering the anti-war protests, CNN’s coverage failed to scratch the surface."

Not once did CNN bother to inform viewers of the radical agenda of the events’ sponsor, a group called International A.NS.W.E.R., which is an outgrowth of the communist Workers World Party. Nor did CNN show any of the extreme, hateful rhetoric of protest speakers. Only once in 38 stories did CNN balance its stories about appeasement demonstrations by mentioning that polls showed such sentiments were shared by only a small minority of Americans.

Instead, CNN’s sanitized coverage put a positive spin on the protests. Reporting from New York City that Saturday afternoon, Hinojosa championed the diversity and size of an anti-war, anti-Bush march. Hinojosa detected "a very diverse group of people" with "a lot of family members," "a children’s contingent" and a "religious contingent." Though the number of protesters was much smaller, Hinojosa passed along protest hype as she relayed, "I have heard a lot of people coming up and saying that they have heard a million" attended.

Coverage of the hundreds of pro-troops, pro-Bush rallies held nationwide, which drew hundreds of thousands of Americans, was, of course, nearly nonexistent.

Then there was the matter of CNN News chief Eason Jordon’s startling admission that for 12 long years he covered up Saddam’s atrocities. Typically, Jordan refused to admit he’d betrayed his responsibilities as a journalist.

Reporters

MRC analyzed the reporting from inside Baghdad and rated the New York Times widely acclaimed John Burns as the best. The worst were ABC’s Engel, who it said that might have been more useful to the Iraqi cause than any of the other correspondents except National Geographic Explorer’s Peter Arnett, who also made the worst category.

Among the embedded reporters, NBC’s Bloom, CNN’s Walter Rodgers and Fox’s Greg Kelly were rated the best, and ABC’s Koppel was rated the worst.

Said MRC: "Koppel often behaved as if he — not the vast military force that surrounded him — was the real star of the show. Reporters like Bloom, Sanders, Bob Arnot, Rodgers, and Kelly never faded into the background, but they had the good sense to let the story tell itself, as did CBS’s Byron Pitts, who bore witness to the character of the men with whom he was traveling."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Dan Rather/CBS

Media Bias

Middle East

Saddam Hussein/Iraq

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