The Role of Blogs and Visuals Between Victory and Defeat

School of Journalism and Mass Communications Faculty of Economic and Political Sciences

THE ROLE OF BLOGS AND VISUALS BETWEEN

VICTORY AND DEFEAT

BY Osman Mohammad A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF DIGITAL MEDIA, COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM Specialization: Risk Communication & Crisis Journalism Supervisor: Assistant Professor Vassilis Vamvakas 2019

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Vassilis Vamvakas for his support, valuable suggestions and very constructive criticism for the completion of this research.

Abstract We are living in an era where information management plays a crucial role and the message is widespread through various mediums due to an increasingly complex political and media landscape. As the fourth pillar of the state, the news media has had significance in society for many decades. Ordinary citizens acquire global political and social issues through media platforms. Information conveyed through the news media has a strong effect on how individuals think and rethink about the possible outcomes of agenda-setting, priming, and framing. This study intends to examine the effects of media frames used by leading news agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom for the two Iraq wars (1991 and 2003) and, in contrast, an individual frame of news investigation through the internet as critical reporting or self-framing. This research paper examines the role of participatory journalism (online) by official and ordinary internet users to challenge the corporate mass media that keeps the communication strategies in a grey area. The study will investigate the concept of blogging and the effectiveness of the internet during conflicts when it is difficult to report from the battlegrounds. The alternative reporting of war and conflicts have had an impact on mainstream media, i.e. the whole concept of the Arab Spring was based on new media and citizen journalism. A qualitative textual analysis has been applied to examine the coverage of the conflict by mainstream media and independent users of social media during the 2003 Iraq War in order to challenge the ideological model of war and the structural limitations of the mainstream media faced by the journalist community, such as misleading information due to the professional environment, political barriers, national agenda, ratings, and profits. The study aims to shed light on alternative reporting that destabilizes the position of war correspondents, such as private military blogs, independent bloggers, and the circulation of pictures on the private networks of army personnel. Keywords Information management, global security propaganda, Saddam-Al-Qaida network

Abstract ...... i

Keywords ...... i

CHAPTER 1 ...... 1

1.1 Introduction ...... 1

1.2 Objective ...... 2

1.3 Research Questions ...... 2

1.4 Ideologies of Wars ...... 2

CHAPTER 2 ...... 4

2.1 Literature Review ...... 4

2.1.1 Framing ...... 4

2.2 Types of News Media Framing ...... 7

2.2.1 Episodic Frames ...... 7

2.2.2 Thematic Frames ...... 7

2.2.3 Agenda Setting ...... 9

2.2.4 Agenda Extension ...... 10

2.2.5 Audience Frame ...... 11

2.2.6 Classic Model of Communication ...... 11

CHAPTER 3 ...... 12

3.1 Individual Framing ...... 12

3.2 Theories of Alternative Media...... 13

3.3 Alternative Media for Blogging ...... 13

CHAPTER 4 ...... 23

4.1 Methodology...... 23

4.1.1 Media Frames used before the first Iraq War of 1991 ...... 24

4.1.2 Media Frames used before the second Iraq War of 2003 ...... 26

4.1.3 Independent Bloggers / Individual Frames during the Iraq War 2003...... 27

CHAPTER 5 ...... 33

5.1 Results/Findings ...... 33

5.2 Discussion ...... 38

5.3 Drawbacks of citizen journalism (online media) ...... 47

5.4 Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research ...... 47

5.5 Conclusion ...... 48

Bibliography...... 52

Figure 1 - Five Questions Article Colby Buzzell ...... 20 Figure 2 - My War Book Cover Colby Buzzell ...... 21 Figure 3 - Infamous photos of US Soldiers torturing Iraqi Prisoners...... 27 Figure 4 - Snarling dogs and enforced nudity Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison...... 28 Figure 5 - Salam Pax Book Cover...... 30 Figure 6 - Baghdad Burning Book Cover ...... 32

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CHAPTER 1 1.1 Introduction This study aims to investigate news reports that supported the military coup for the two Iraq wars, and the way that journalists had defended the argument of war in favour of national interest and considered the enemy as a major threat to global peace and stability. This research is also useful in analysing the differences in the used frames between news stories and online individual frames. In the early 2000s, there was a heated debate that Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were hidden in Iraq. This argument got intensive publicity through the media. In 2002, both the ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, and the ex-President of the United States, George Bush (junior), expressed their concerns in a press conference that Iraq had denied International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors access to a nuclear site and there was evidence that Iraq was in a position to develop nuclear weapons within six months. Three weeks later, in a press conference, the chief spokesperson of the IAEA, Mark Gwozdecky, disagreed with such claims. The attack on Iraq in 2003 was an executive order of President George W. Bush. The United States is not a truly democratic society when it comes to global policy. It is more appropriate to say it is a pluralistic society where top-level decisions reflect the authoritarian approach (Paul, 2004). President Bush (junior) called it the ‘Axis of Evil' and the Bush administration was successful in convincing the world that Iraq possessed WMDs and the military action in Iraq was part of the ‘War on Terror’ strategy. Framing the news helps researchers to understand how public opinion is shaped by the media. The newspapers of the United States and the United Kingdom have framed the war to support global peace, regional stability in the Middle East and portrayed the President of Iraq as an enemy of the West. The advancement of technology, its access to the general audience, and the internet led to a negative reaction to the US military action against Iraq in 2003. This resulted in a huge controversy and provided a prime opportunity to individual frame players to resist the news media frames. The involvement of independent internet users in the 2003 Iraq War proved to be an ideal subject for the researchers to go for an in-depth study in order to explore the possibilities of alternative sources of reporting during the wars. The emerging new media has empowered ordinary people to produce individual frames (unofficial narrative) and represented social media as a critical reporting forum. The media frames established by news agencies were manipulated and follow the lines of the state. There is a wide variety of options for audiences to select information sources, including

infinite TV channels, print media, Facebook updates, Twitter tweets, text messaging, blogging, images, and they engage in information according to their cultural backgrounds and interests, especially for the news content (Atkin, Jeffres and Neuendorf, 2012). The new media (internet) platform provided ordinary audiences with strong control over media content (Prior, 2007; Rittenberg, Tewksbury, Casey, 2012). There is a paradigm shift from the mass- mediated model of filtered broadcast and the print era to an individual model of the digital era (the internet). The new digital media provided more authority that enabled individual voices to share their political view (Bakker and de Vreese, 2011; Earl and Kimport, 2011; Ostman, 2012). Scholars believe that news has characteristics to create similar sentiments, memories and experiences that promote unity in a community (Anderson, 1993; Bucy et al., 2007; Carey, 1989). Finally, this research targets different proportions of alternative media as critical voices by individuals to oppose the monopoly of mainstream media and reveal the truth. Alternative or critical media content is a platform for unheard voices, and individual users of the internet argue for a change with the support of the whole of society. Alternative media is an emerging development in the form of individual frames that enable ordinary social media users to advance their imagination from a distinct perspective. 1.2 Objective The main objective of this research study is to present the positive angle of social media at times of war when the government restricts the mainstream media. Further, to determine the critical distance that US soldiers had towards the government during their presence in Iraq, as they opposed the official stance of chaos. Further, to examine how the internet medium bypasses the mechanism of traditional news coverage designed by the government or the military. The citizens of Iraq and US military bloggers witnessed the war from a different angle and generated alternative discourses. 1.3 Research Questions The study attempts to answer the following questions: R1: How do media frames tend to affect public opinion and the role of traditional journalism to construct views and storylines? R2: How did individual frames challenge the mainstream media during the 2003 Iraq War? 1.4 Ideologies of Wars It has been witnessed that during the first Gulf War, also referred to as the US-Iraq War, Cable News Network (CNN) introduced live audio of bombing raids of Iraq war. In 2003,

during the second Iraq War, fought between the US and Iraq, CNN was again on the frontline as state TV of the US, broadcasting live visuals of the bombardment, and providing viewers with a televised war due to the advancement of technology. Conflict is an opportunity for augmentation; the media sells clashes and quarrels to generate high revenue and ratings. Many things had remained hidden and toxic prior to, and in the initial days of the war; both the Bush administration and the Blair leadership gave the wrong impression to the media, the people and to an international community that: • Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat with WMDs and chemicals which could be fired within 45 minutes • Saddam had deep-rooted ties with Al-Qaeda, could provide these weapons to the extremist organization, and 9/11 was connected with Saddam • Iraq got nuclear technology from Niger

CHAPTER 2 2.1 Literature Review In this chapter, an analysis of the relevant bibliography is provided on various theories that are relevant to news framing of war and conflict situations.

2.1.1 Framing

Researchers have interpreted the term ‘framing’ in multiple ways. It could be applied to influence or manipulation, whatever achieves the objective. For example, take a statement by a politician. You can extract a few words as a frame to prove the person is disloyal on the basis of baseless allegations. However, there is another way to interpret this, by selecting a few words from the same communication that prove the person is blameless. Framing is all about the intention of the writer, author, and journalist to portray issues that generate a beneficial outcome and serve the agenda for the audience. It depends on the reporters and journalists if frames are used in a conscious or unconscious way to affect the judgment of the readers about the particular concern (Dahl, 2015; Entman, 1993). During the Spanish-American War of 1898, a photojournalist from The New York Journal was sent to Cuba to get the facts. The photojournalist failed to find any evidence that indicated there was a war, so he was told by the editor and other staff members in the United States that: "You furnish the pictures, we will furnish the war in news." (Shinar, 2013, p1) The war broke out as a result of false propaganda that accused the Spanish army of torturing and raping the people of Cuba. The then-US President William McKinley was against the confrontation, but war broke out due to immense media pressure and the rise of public opinion, and it finally ended Spanish colonial rule in the American continent1. The Rwandan civil war is also known as the Rwanda genocide of 1994, a conflict between the National Army and rebel forces. The state-owned media broadcasts promoted hatred and violence countrywide that caused 50,000 deaths. During another popular war, the Yugoslavia-Serbia conflict in 1990, which was fought in the Balkan region, the Serbian regime used media propaganda to promote war between the two neighbours (Grove. 2008). Numerous authors have presented their own understanding of the scope of framing in communication, but the most appropriate and accepted definition of focusing audience attention by framing was elaborated by Entman (1993): “Framing essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects of perceived reality and make them

1 Retrieved on 26/09/2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_colonization_of_the_Americas

more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman, 1993). In conveying communication, framing also serves the objective of amending the truth by underlining selected aspects of the facts to capture the attention of the audience (Entman, 1993). The meaningful essence of the frames is found in quotations, leads, and headlines (Dahl, 2015). Creating a frame requires a series of actions, as there is a long development process, such as ‘Frame Building’, ‘Frame Setting’ and ‘Societal and Individual level consequences’ (De Vreese, 2005). The first step is frame building, which refers to the internal and external circumstances that affect journalists when constructing news frames. In the second step, frame-setting refers to a link between a frame, media and its effect on the receiver. The last phase places more importance on the whole process of framing and is often called the result phase. Such consequences are acceptable in a personal manner on certain issues, whereas the societal consequence has an effect on a broader perspective, like the process of making a firm decision (De Vreese, 2005). Frames have an important effect on human memory and the audience can memorize and recall the specific details mentioned in the news article (Valkenburg, Semetko & De Vreese, 1999). This indicates that a journalist has an impact on the reader's decision to use a particular frame on a certain topic. Five frames were identified by Neuman, Just, and Crigler (1992) that are commonly used in US news coverage: a) The Conflict Frame b) The Human Interest Frame c) The Economic Consequence Frame d) The Morality Frame e) The Attribution of Responsibility Frame

The media frames are used for the transmission of messages and do not guarantee their acceptance globally, as frames are interpreted according to the local culture and mindset to the problem (Goffman, 1981). The global audience is quite sensitive to their cultural background and it varies from country to country. Framing is a process used to select some aspects of an event and present it as an issue that needs attention (Entman, 1993). The interpretation of framing also depends on the way of communication and how the message has been conveyed. The receiver can evaluate the frame

in multiple ways (Chong & Druckman, 2007; Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). It mainly depends on people to develop a particular understanding of an issue (Chong & Druckman, 2007). A media frame covers multiple dimensions of information, such as organizing ideas, news texts, storylines and an event (Gamson, 1974; Entman, 1991). It also refers to a theme that serves as a valuable tool that enables reporters, journalists and news organization to produce stories. Therefore, frames are precise and followed by organizational guidelines, pressures, and space-time restrictions. Journalists add a twist to the stories, according to their own thoughts and bias, in order to hook the attention of the audience (Gans, 1979). The frame depicts the issue’s main area of contention (Gamson and Modigliani, 1987). Framing can also be explained from the receiver's perspective. This is known as ‘schema' – how the audience perceives the various news events, as offered by the mass media and news agencies (Gamson and Modigliani, 1987). A series of protests were observed in 2011 in the North African Arab countries of Egypt and Tunisia against the oppression of authoritarian style political systems and to put pressure on other neighbours in the region. The 2011 Middle East unrest, also known as the Arab Spring, was framed as an awakening and a new ray of hope, rather than chaos. The focus was put on democratic reforms, human rights, and equality. Similarly, from 1940 to 1960, a popular news frame of ‘social progress’ was applied in the goodwill given to the Nuclear Energy Policy (Gamson and Modigliani, 1989). The frame projected Nuclear Power as the most progressive initiative and the only way to overcome the energy crisis. The constructive angle was portrayed to achieve a positive outcome and thus omitted the negative consequences of nuclear technology. It all depends on the news media agencies and world powers to design news frames for a local and global audience. If Iran and North Korea were developing nuclear weapons in the 21st century, they were disregarded and faced heavy economic sanctions by the United States. The famous frame, ‘War on Terror’, was created by the words spoken by the George W. Bush administration. Such a frame gives an indication that the United States views the world in this way (Reese, 2010). Military action against any country is part of foreign policy. Resse (2010) explained the concept of news framing from two outlooks, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ positions. The ‘what’ perspective is based on the frame building process, and on the other hand, the ‘how’ addresses the understanding of the frames to the receivers or the audience. It involves an individual's mental action to grasp the message.

During the frame-building process, it is important to consider cultural and social structures in order to identify the reasoning factors (Gamson and Modigliani, 1989). 2.2 Types of News Media Framing Shanto Iyengar, an American political scientist and political professor, presented the two types of news media frames in his book, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues (1994). There are multiple angles to frame a news story so that the audience understands the reason for an issue and takes action towards a solution.

2.2.1 Episodic Frames

Mostly, news coverage that is relevant to public concerns is referred to as episodic frames. These frames are based on individual cases, a person and a distinct event. Basically, they are concerned with singularity; for example, an individual's attitude or a specific behaviour within a family. An episodic frame highlights an individual as being the one responsible.

2.2.2 Thematic Frames

Whereas a thematic frame presents an issue that requires a broader level to understand the social context; for example, the effect on the environment due to the rising population or pollution from cars. High inflation will increase the living expenses of low-income inhabitants. Thematic framing focuses on an issue that has been created by an individual for others. The objective behind thematic stories is to create greater public awareness and public engagement towards a solution to the problem. Let's take into consideration the examples of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, which are the recent wars that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. In the case of Iraq and Libya, the basic problem was to remove the long-serving dictators, Saddam Hussein, who had ruled Iraq as President and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. In the case of Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda had a strong foothold that was a threat to the West. Based on three cases, an initial frame used by the global corporate mass media was episodic, but after the wars, the situation became worst in the three countries and the frame turned to thematic. Iraq War 1991: episodic framing (Saddam was the problem), so it was an individual concern. Iraq War 2003: thematic framing (Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction), a matter of social concern. Episodic framing revolves around having sufficient knowledge of an issue, and in contrast to a thematic frame, the focus is on a sustainable policy structure. Another way to understand episodic and thematic framing in the news media is the European Refugee Crisis of 2015. The

episodic frame could be that the Syrian government and ISIS were responsible for people fleeing to EU countries; on the other hand, the thematic frame could be the health issue caused by incoming refugees to Europe. They might carry diseases which could spread to European citizens. The media promotes both types of framing, according to the situation and the level of audience involvement in a particular problem. The episodic frame refers to the specific event or person and information that is provided within a fixed parameter (Cacciatore, Scheufele and Iyengar, 2016). While, the thematic frame speaks of an issue on a broader perspective and position with policies (Barnes et al., 2008). The thematic frames are presented in detail (Iyengar and Simon, 1993). The thematic frame constructs a political debate that influences a wider audience (Iyengar, 1991). In most of the cases, one of the frames is applied to address the concern (Iyengar, 1991). Therefore, how a piece of news is framed for the audience depends on the news organizations’ strategy. For instance, if a person, victim or a particular event is the intention, then it reflects an episodic frame. If the issue or an event is bigger and the utmost attention is needed on the whole situation, which is connected to the socio-cultural context, it can be considered a thematic frame. The basic difference among the two kinds of episodic framing indicates individual concerns, those issues that bother limited people, in contrast, to the thematic framing, which suggests a necessary course of action as being a collective responsibility on a broader level (Iyengar, 1991). Iyengar and Simon (1993), also suggested that frames have an important role in political issues in their press coverage. News framing on political issues also provides an opportunity for the audience to offer durable solutions by sending their opinions on the crisis. In this way, there could be less criticism (Iyengar, 1991). War isn’t completed by a military attack on the enemy, it has to contest for public opinion through media strategies (Taylor 1997, Thussu and Freedom 2003). The media has become a combat zone, with journalists and reporters playing the role of soldiers under orders or without orders. War news always attracts the audience and engages them intellectually and emotionally. Sometimes, the media also draw a line between the coverage of important events and unimportant events. When Iraq had attacked Israel with Scud ballistic missiles, there were fewer causalities, but the media reporting was based on the high loss of innocent lives, while the coverage of Gulf war in the Western media didn't portray civilian deaths and suffering humans. This kind of news framing is very common during the coverage of conflicts and has been discussed by various media researchers. Media creates a distinction between the worthy and unworthy

when reporting issues that concern victims (Herman & Chomsky, 1988). Further, it is elaborated that a worthy victim of war is categorized by sympathy and sorrow that is more painful to journalists. The news is often covered with close-up shots of wounded victims and the war correspondent makes great efforts to portray the real face of war. By doing this, the audience forms an emotional approach with the pain of the victim. The death toll of the civilians in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War was recorded as being between 1,00,000 and 500,000 (The Human Costs of the Gulf War 2005), but the United States had refused to disclose the number of dead civilians. Therefore, these Iraqi dead civilians were the unworthy victims for the Western media and the audience remained unaware of the facts. In this research project, I have applied the framing theory to examine the information strategy that is used by news agencies to seize the attention of the audiences.

2.2.3 Agenda Setting

During the 1970s, the concept of agenda-setting evolved and since then has become an integral part of the research of political communication in social sciences. Agenda setting got unprecedented attention after it was explored by McCombs and Shaw (1972) and set a benchmark for researchers at that time (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). McCombs and Shaw (1972) came up with findings which showed that agenda-setting in political campaigns has relevance in shaping public opinion and the behaviour of political issues. Later on, several researchers have represented their work, based on the agenda-setting concept, and also compared it with framing theory (Kleinnijenhuis, Oegema, Utz and van Atteveldt, 2012). The PEW Research Centre's 2003 study on the People and the Press revealed that American political opinion about news organizations was divided, with 53 per cent of the audience believing that the news and information provided was manipulated and an element of bias was obvious, while 29 per cent were optimistic that news agencies played a key role in keeping bias out of reporting (Harpen, 2004). Reporters, journalists, and editors design news frames that serve the objective of the newsroom culture and their individual sympathies (Kuypers, 1997, 2002, 2005; Cooper, in press). On the other hand, the audience has a dilemma as they never double-check the news and facts from multiple sources and believe the news sources available to them. For example, if a TV channel chooses to broadcast an assassination of a journalist, the audience could build their opinion about it and that would also reflect the policy of the newsroom. Different news

agencies would build their narrative based on the principles of their editorial policy. Another relevant example was quoted by McCombs and Shaw (1972), who said that voters become aware of problems when they are highlighted by the press, which they firmly believe and share with others. The news sources not only tell the audience ‘what to think’ but also ‘what to think about’ (Cohen, 1963). This notion is called agenda-setting. The agenda-setting theory had a great influence on subsequent studies into the mass media’s strong impact on political decision-making and their ability to motivate common people ‘what to think about’. As stated, the media shape people’s minds to hype a specific debate; therefore, the importance and relevance of a story to the public sphere will also depend on the amount of time given to its news coverage.2

2.2.4 Agenda Extension

Agenda setting theory moves to a new level with agenda extension, which is based on the justification that the news media also propose ‘how one should think’. It takes place when the press neglects the impartiality and truth of news reporting (Kuypers, 1997, 2002, 2005). Agenda extension is widely applied in news framing to engage the audience in a certain direction. A frame remains a central theme of recent happenings and indicates things about an issue (Gamson, 1989). Examples of agenda extension are as follows: a) The Watergate scandal (1972), an abuse of power by the administration of the then- President, Richard Nixon. He was the 37th President of the United States. The initial media frames discussed the elections of 1972 before the mass media diverted attention to Washington D.C corruption. b) Another example is of two commercial jets that were gunned down by military forces on separate occasions, KAL (Korean Airlines) 007 and Iran Air 655. KAL was hit by Soviet fighter jets in 1983 for the violation of territorial rights as the plane had entered Soviet airspace. In 1988, Iranian Airline shot down in the Persian Gulf by USS Vincennes. The news stories appeared on various mediums in the United States. For the Iranian flight, the news frame was a technical fault. The Korean plane tragedy was framed as the bad behaviour of Koreans, a response to negative behaviour by Russians.

2 Retrieved on 01/10/2018 https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/communication-theories/sorted-by-cluster/Mass- Media/Agenda-Setting_Theory

Similarly, it was difficult for the US to reveal the truth that the Islamic regime of Iran was intolerable, so they framed it as technology failure. Framing is also explained in a simpler form – how an issue is presented in news reports and how it is conceived by audiences (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). Two concepts of framing need exploratory research: media frame, and individual frame.

2.2.5 Audience Frame

A term ‘schema’ is used for the mental structure of human memory to interpret information, the situation and other life experiences (Goffman, 1974; Entman, 1991). When people are exposed to a message or particular news, they form schemata which refer to a chain of thought processing. People grasp information according to their level of understandings; the more they think, the better they conclude a balanced analysis of a story. Based on initial schemata, the audience can further extract different perspectives of the message conveyed in a frame (Graber, 1988).

2.2.6 Classic Model of Communication

This model is pertinent to understanding the media-audience relationship (Sender-Message- Channel-Receiver). A news organization frames a message as the ‘sender' through a medium (channel) to the other end, intended to the audience as the ‘receiver' (Berlo, 1960). Another important aspect of this model is that it's not necessary to create media frames and gain attention. Sometimes news coverage is reported in its original form, without avoiding any single element of the whole story (Gamson, 1989).

CHAPTER 3 3.1 Individual Framing This is the process of absorbing the given information and interpreting it into different ideas, according to beliefs and thoughts (Entman, 1993). An individual frame could be categorized as emotional and intellectual activity that takes place in the mind over the passage of time due to various beliefs, such as long-term political disputes, ideological differences and affiliations, and other micro-level factors that cause an impact on individual lives, but it may also develop after a recent event and mass media frames (Kinder and Sanders, 1990). Individual frames are also an audience response to the message conveyed through media frames. In the past, when the audience to getting the news from limited news sources and the information provided was explicit or implicit, there was a single method of communication. The mid-1990s was the beginning of the digital era and the emerging digital revolution provided multiple platforms, such as blogs, Twitter, social networking sites, podcasts, video and image sharing. The traditional news environment was badly affected and lost its dominance as a power player. Advanced digital cell phones with video recording features and YouTube channels that can make videos viral have challenged the dominance of global mainstream corporate media. During conflicts, the war correspondents rely on official and military sources, so it is difficult for them to verify the sources. It is also dangerous, and they are restricted in their travel to the battlefields. An American journalist, Glenn Greenwood, criticized this in an article subtitled, “No matter how many times it results in false reporting, our press corps continues to base their ‘war reporting’ on unverified military and government claims” (22 June 2007). Another example of the inaccuracy of news framing was reported in the US mainstream media, which stated: “US helicopters have killed 17 gunmen with suspected Al-Qaeda links in Iraq’s Diyala province north of Baghdad, the US military says”. Later, it was found that the 17 victims were local villagers who had gathered to fight against Al-Qaeda and were killed in a suspicious attempt, despite knowing that US corporate mainstream media had a long history of inaccurate news framing. The Iraq misadventure laid the foundation of a new kind of reporting based on truth in the form of blogs, photography, and videography to produce significant critical coverage, and many stories were taken up by leading international mainstream media.

The new digital media had proved to be a critical and alternative source of authentic reporting and resisted the misdeeds of the corporate media. 3.2 Theories of Alternative Media Bailey, Cammaerts, and Carpentier (2008) introduced the theories that are relevant to alternative media. They constructed four approaches to understanding the concept of alternative media in diverse forms. a) The community media approach: The participation of the members of a community to engage in media production. b) Second approach: This referred to mainstream media vs alternative mainstream media, i.e. large-scale, state-owned or commercial vs small scale, independent, non-dominant discourses. c) Third approach: Counter-hegemonic media, a third media between the state media and commercial media. d) Fourth approach: Rhizomatic media, a link between protest groups and movements that connect a local and global audience and establish a relationship with the state.

3.3 Alternative Media for Blogging Blogs appeared as an alternative source of information and news in the 21st century (Allan, 2006; Blood, 2002; Lasica, 2001; Rettberg, 2008). The bloggers have represented the coverage of war from a different angle and yet disapproved of war correspondents and journalists for incorrect reporting (Wall, 2005; Wall and Bicket, 2008). The blogging platform and other online portals have provided a lot of opportunities for war correspondents. Bloggers have proved to be the eyewitness of the event and happenings around them, which provides a key chance for the journalists, reporters, and correspondents to take advantage of an insight or information from online accounts and engage with opinions, comments, and feedback in order to enhance their political knowledge (Bruns, 2009; Gillmor, 2003; Lasica, 2003). The concept of blogging during war reporting is regarded as a communication tool used by citizen journalists, eyewitnesses and news commentators (Allan and Matheson, 2009; Wall, 2005). The military organizations have received less appreciation for blogging during war and conflict reporting (Caldwell et al., 2009). In fact, the corporate mass media have been highly influenced by the blogosphere and often shed light on prominent bloggers and online users during wars for critical and balanced reporting. Based on this, global governments and military organizations regularly follow emerging digital platforms to get grassroots level information from social media users. In this research

report, I will try to analyse the progress there has been in the blogosphere at times of wars and to what extent journalists benefit from alternative sources for war coverage when it is difficult for them to reach the war zones. There are six areas that provide possibilities for critical reporting and to challenge the narrative of mainstream media on war and conflicts. a) Eyewitness Accounts: After the 9/11 attacks, it was predicted that the future of blogging was vital and would play a more constructive role in reporting news events. These bloggers call themselves personal journalists (Allan, 2004, 357). For example, one blogger from New York, James Marino, operates his own website covering celebrity news. His office was next to the famous Twin Towers, and while working in the office on the morning of September 11, 2001. According to Scott Rosenberg (2019) James Marino posted on 9/11/2011, 08:56:32 AM that:

“Something very terrible just happened at the World Trade Centre. I think a plane crashed into the north-western tower. It is horrible and stunning to look at.” James, posted on 9/11/2011, 09:06:06 AM [post 2]: “Oh my God. I just saw the other building blow up. A second plane approaching from the opposite direction (south to north) crashed into the south-east tower.” James, posted on 9/11/2011, 10:02:52 AM [post 3]: "One tower just collapsed (southeast) I am weeping … I can't tell you how I feel." James, posted on 9/11/2011, 10:33:07 AM [post 4]: “The second building just exploded and collapsed. This is just beyond anything that I can even conceive. I feel so much anger and helplessness.” James had a full view of Downtown New York; therefore, he was an eyewitness of the whole incident and wrote about it on his website (Rossenberg, 2009: 1-4). James’ initiative to document September 11 events was an individual form of news framing. With the passage of time, such an independent type of news reporting has increased globally due to its high potential and because it is uncensored. Another prominent example of an eyewitness account occurred during the Iraq War of 2003 when a few bloggers came into the limelight for their critical, neutral, and balanced reporting,

such as Salam Pax and Riverbend, who got exceptional acknowledgement by an international audience and news organisations. These bloggers drew attention to the hopes and aspirations of people while criticising both the Iraq government and the United States. Of the two Iraqi bloggers, Salam Pax presented his opinion in the most convincing way and got the most attention of the audience due to an informal style of reporting, free from traditional boundaries and agenda-setting (Katz, 2003). Many veteran journalists have changed their attitude about the importance of independent bloggers (Rosen, 2005. Online genres have progressed; apart from blogging, eyewitnesses have also contributed through microblogging platforms like Twitter. It has also enabled individual users to instantly report the news, events, and incidents. There have been many examples where a Twitter Handle was used as a reporting tool and marked as citizen journalism to cover an important event, like the bomb blast in Bangalore (India). In July 2008, a technology entrepreneur called Mukund Mohan used his mobile phone and a personal computer to report on the incident as an eyewitness (Mohan, 2008, 2010). Twitter allows you to type 280 characters at a time and it was found to be more useful for ongoing breaking news in comparison to blogs. During the Mumbai (India) attacks in November 2008, it was observed by the BBC journalist that many Indians used Twitter accounts to receive and forward information (Dissanayake, 2010). The Twitter platform also attracts many journalists because it has the feature of a searchable breaking news wire and therefore Twitter users help to inform mainstream media journalists about the latest developments. Twitter is easily accessible. Sometimes the presence of a blogger at the crime scene or near the place of the incident is crucial for digital content due to the fact that the position of a blogger in reporting the facts is far better than ordinary reporters and war correspondents. Traditional journalism has been challenged on various occasions by the live blogging phenomenon. One of the basic factors in online reporting is the technological advancement of mobile phones that result in nonstop live updates as the story develops. Mainstream media organisations are also shifting towards social media content by introducing special departments, like the ‘user-generated content' hub established at the BBC. The function of this unit is to crosscheck online sources and the credibility of the information that is shared by bloggers. Similarly, CNN has ‘iReport for CNN’, a tool for citizen journalism reports on the internet, which allows ordinary people to share images, videos and other content. It goes through the validation process and then publishes the content on the website.

The government and the military institutions do control the flow of information during times of crisis by filtrations on the internet and even they take a harsh stance by blocking websites and internet connection. But overall, eyewitness accounts available on the internet are indirectly supporting the objective of the journalists in circumstances when access to the sites is limited, it is dangerous to travel, and it is highly expensive to carry out the news reporting. The significance of a citizen journalist, activist, and blogger cannot be neglected. There is a seductive approach that evolves from experiencing war and conflicts personally that differs from the way that professional journalists cover news and events (Allan and Matheson, 2009, 147). b) Independent journalists and NGOs: Another category of bloggers are professional journalists practising in the field, both independently and in association with news organisations. For instance, Christopher Allbritton, a web blogger and journalist, started the weblog "Back to Iraq" during the Iraq War of 2003. He had taught a blogging course at New York University, and his readers assisted him financially to cover the Iraq War, so he became the reader-funded journalist-blogger. He had also worked for the Associated Press and The New York Daily News, covering the news on business, internet, and technology. In 2006, he moved to Beirut to report on the Israel- Lebanon conflict. Finally, he was appointed as Thomson Reuter's bureau chief for three years in Pakistan. According to him, it was a successful experiment in independent journalism. He refused to be labelled as a blogger and insisted he is a trained journalist (Allbriton, 2007). On his blogging content, he made it clear to the readers that all the texts were based on his personal understanding and experience, and the words expressed did not match the inverted pyramid style of expression, as found in traditional journalism (Allbritton, 2003). Michael Yon is another example of independent reporting. He spent most of the time as an embedded reporter with American and British troops in Iraq and successfully built trustful ties with his readers (Betz, 2008, 526). He maintained a sympathetic image with the soldiers who served in conflict zones, while also being blatantly critical about the negative attitude and strategies of the military and was reported to have online arguments with military bloggers about their wrongdoings. A few of his famous writings are included on Wikipedia, including: • 2006 Battle with shock magazine (Iraq) • 2007 Reporting atrocities by Al-Qaeda in Iraq • Moment of Truth in Iraq

Journalism has a wide scope and is not limited to mainstream media and independent bloggers. Various NGOs also run their own blog pages to shed light on crisis events, emergencies, and conflict to give their own understanding of the causes and aftermath of unpleasant situations. The independent journalists, activists, and NGOs are free from all the barriers of traditional media, editorial policy, and other hurdles. They could easily use the blogs to expose the real issues faced by the people. The most positive angle of such bloggers is to provide a voice to the unheard or people who are irrelevant to the news agenda due to the fact that the news media are always in search of new stories (Bourdieu, 1988, 7). Basically, they intermediate as a single voice to empathise the public opinion (Seaton, 2005, 100). Further, the action of blogs is similar to weapons of care (Hoskins and O’Loughlin, 2010). There are some incentives that motivate independent writers and journalists to share their work with corporate media in lieu of financial assistance to their ongoing and future projects. On the other hand, the relationship between independent journalists and NGOs has great potential. The journalist community gets access to sensitive and uncovered issues, while NGOs gets more fame and encouragement on humanitarian grounds. Hence, it is not wrong to say that the news disclosed by NGOs delivers an alternative perspective on crises, emergencies or war. During the Refugee Crisis in 2015, many aid organisations in Greece independently reported on their websites. c) Bridge Bloggers: This category of the blogger is referred to as the online content writers away from their homeland and conflict zones. They accomplish their mission abroad for various reasons, such as safety, security, being well aware of the two cultures, and multilingual skills, so they cater for both home country readers and the international audience in a more trusted way. Sometimes, the international blogging community gives a tough time to local bloggers, which works two ways, both positive and negative. For example, local bloggers were supported by overseas bloggers during the Lebanon war of 2006. A wave of blogging culture appeared in Lebanese politics after the murder of the long-serving Sunni Prime Minister, Rafiq Al-Hariri in February 2005, and it broke into a conflict between Hezbollah and Israel (SuneHaugbolle, 2007). The fact of the matter is that, at times, local bloggers face resistance from a group of bloggers who belong to the same country but are spread out in different parts of the world. The leading local bloggers during the Lebanon War in 2006 were ‘Kerblog’ and ‘Siege Notes’ (Haugbolle, 2007). RashaSalti, a Beirut-based writer and researcher started expressing her political thoughts on the conflict, and her analysis was also shared by various bloggers (Harb, 2009). Some bloggers fled to neighbouring

countries and continued their writing challenge from Syria and Jordan due to security concerns (Fadda-Conrey, 2010). The overseas bloggers add value to the writing produced by locals, making it thought-provoking and exclusive at a later stage for readers, such as their personal explanations of the situation. Therefore, overseas bloggers are coined as Bridge Bloggers (Ethan Zuckerman, 2008). The idea behind the bridge bloggers is basically a referee between the two cultures because they hold a strong knowledge of global politics, language and translating skills. Sometimes, a bridge blogger operates the accounts and design message strategy for the local community, based on the information given by witnesses of the conflict. It is apparent that bloggers do get attention from traditional media because of their remarkable contribution during conflict and crisis. Many bloggers focus on disturbing images of the war because such photographs cannot be broadcasted on mainstream media due to the organisation's editorial policy (Waret, 2007). Examples of decomposing illustration had been noticed in the Iraq War of 2003 from the Abu Ghraib detention cell of the United States forces and similar deadly and wounded images were sent by the As-Safir Lebanese newspaper to overseas bloggers from Lebanon. d) Analysts and Specialists: This category contains bloggers who are passionate about writing in their respective fields. These people carry out their expert opinion to a niche audience and often get attention from the corporate news media. For instance, Iraqi politics revolve around three communities and natural resources. This division in society has a strong impact on domestic politics, i.e. the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurdish populations. Hayder al-Khoei is an Iraqi researcher at the Centre for Academic Shia Studies in London and producer of online content for the blog “Eye Rak”. Hayder posted on 21/04/2009: "It took Great Britain 500 years to agree on a constitution (that isn't even written) and to unite. Over 600,000 American's died during 5 years of bloody war fighting for freedom and for their constitution. How long did it take Germany to recover after Hitler and his Nazi party!? How long did it take for Japan to recover after WWII!? How long has it been since Baghdad fell!? 3 years... Only 3 years. It will take at least a generation of time before we can finally have peace in Iraq." Hayder and his family felt insecure during Saddam's regime. After the end of the brutal era, he became confident enough to openly express his views on Iraqi politics and discuss durable solutions for peace and prosperity.

Richard A.E. North is a British author and blogger on defence-related issues. He had also written books on defence. In his blog, he raised concerns about the safety measures for British troops in the Afghanistan war of 2001. Another leading defence blog that contributes a lot to global security issues is "Arms Control Wonk". This helps a lot in answering all the technical queries for journalists who are assigned war and conflict issues (Corera, 2007). e) Mil-Blogs/Military Blogging: Due to their easy access to the internet during the 2003 Iraq war, many US military personnel and their families were using blogs in their free time to stay connected. Besides Iraqi citizens, blogging was also an independent alternative platform for military staff who could use it as an opportunity and reveal the truth to their family and friends in the United States. The US soldiers were eyewitnesses of the war and well aware of the ground reality after arriving in Iraq; therefore, through their personal web accounts, they projected the war onto concrete narrations that were based on their everyday experiences. Such narratives were personal framing of individual soldiers from the battleground and contradicted the mainstream media reporting. War correspondents and journalists have limited access or no access at all to the sites during conflicts due to various reasons, like safety precautions and privacy of military activities. In this scenario, serving soldiers in military action are reliable sources that provide authentic information to the audience (Rosengarten, 2007). The US soldier blog, A Day in Iraq, is written by a foot soldier, Michael. He used to explain everyday life in an emotional way that was full of stress and showed unoriginality of war and the lack of interest in the war. “The horror. There is no horror here, not now anyway. We even make fun of the horror. The horror would be a more accurate description of a four-hour guard shift. How we dread the time we have to spend on force protection. It kills you from the inside out, eating away at you like cancer.” (A Day in Iraq, 11/06/2005)

Another critical blog was My War: “Killing Time in Iraq” by Army Specialist Colby Buzzell. He was a popular blogger among the outline audience with a daily hit rate of 10,000 in September 2004 (Cooper, 2004). He won the Lulu Blooker Prize in 2007 for the print edition of his blog (Buzzell, 2005). He became famous for his blogs and his audience were greatly inspired by exchanging their thoughts with him. By doing this, they became active and rejected the idea of a passive audience (Livingstone, 2004).

Due to the popularity of his blogs, the Pentagon censors traced out his online activities (Cooper, 2004; Rosengarten, 2006). The online content he produced was a threat as it opposed the strategy of military action in Iraq, Therefore, he was told to be careful in presenting his thoughts on war and ordered to erase two posts from his archive that had damaged the credibility of US soldiers. He was also informed that all his online activities would remain under surveillance and go through the same process in order to remove unwanted information. After this incident, the Pentagon became intolerant towards military blogs and more strict measures were applied to the use of the internet by soldiers (DoD, 2007). The first harsh stance by the military command was to block several social networking websites from the battleground, so soldiers could not access YouTube and Myspace. Even soldiers’ emails would be subjected to regular monitoring (Rosengarten, 2006). The censored posts were published in Esquire Magazine. He wrote a war diary from the viewpoint of a soldier who was on the frontlines of the war. It's quite difficult to control the internet and Colby Buzzell, posting with the new name of "Men in Black", revealed the truth about war which challenged the actual objective of the war and affected the true spirit of the American soldier.

Figure 1 - Five Questions Article Colby Buzzell

“All sorts of crazy insane Hollywood explosions bullshit going on all around us.” (My War: Killing Time in Iraq, 05/08/2004).

Figure 2 - My War Book Cover Colby Buzzell

The Pentagon was successful in controlling and muting many mil-bloggers. f) Microblogging/Twitter: For tweet news, the first major news broke on a Twitter message on May 1, 2011, about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Later, the news was followed by 24/7 news channels. This was a milestone as it was the first time that news culture was introduced on Twitter in the form of a message, and the news was broken by Keith Urbahn, chief of staff for the former defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in 2009.

“So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot Damn” (Urbahn, 2011). Twitter then recorded 4,000 tweets per second after President Obama confirmed the news (Twitter Comms, 2011). One of the notables was a Pakistani IT consultant, Sohaib Athar, who was very active in tweeting about the US Special Forces raid on Bin Laden’s residence in Pakistan (Butcher, 2011). According to one commentator, Twitter got a chance that was similar to CNN during the First Gulf War (Rosof, 2011). Because the Bin Laden news was officially broken on social media, Twitter had a high flow of tweets about the successful operation to capture the most wanted person on the Earth. Twitter has played a significant role on other occasions as well, such as:

• The earthquake in the Sichuan province of China in May 2008 • The protests during the Iranian election in June 2009

Rebellion and non-state actors are also using Twitter accounts, including: Taliban (@alemerahweb) Al Shahbab (@HSMPress) These groups had tried to impose their stance by engaging in terrorist activities against Western powers, local governments, and soft targets like the public. This was a new challenge where both the enemy and the victim used the same technology to inform the audience about their activities and operations. Insurgents’ microblogging information helps journalists to know their political agenda as well, but how they include this information in their daily journalistic practices needs further scrutiny.

CHAPTER 4 4.1 Methodology This study focused on ten-print stories of the major international news organisations in 1990, 2001 and 2002, prior to the two Iraq wars. In the Second Iraq war of 2003, Iraq was a major contributor to the news, both for news agencies and individuals (Fallows, 2004). The goal of this research was to examine the news reporting from two different perspectives, the media frames and individual frames. The media frames during the Iraq wars were selected from the newspapers of the United States and the United Kingdom. To understand the influence of news media frames on the common people, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and a Public Relations firm were chosen from the US. The two leading newspapers of the US have been compared by researchers in many previous studies. The print media was also active in the United Kingdom, taking its pro-war stance. In this context, three newspapers were taken into consideration, The Evening Standard, The Sun, and The Daily Star. These publications were included because their stories were in favour of military action. The study also moved a step further in analysing the role of emerging alternative voices through social media platforms. Four prominent cases were analysed during the war of 2003: Salam Pax (The Baghdad Blogger), Riverbend (Baghdad Burning Blogger), Military Bloggers (US soldiers’ blogging from the battlefield in Iraq), and the expose of the Abu Ghraib prison pictures (the torture and abuse of Iraqi soldiers by the US army in Iraq). The media frames published by the newspapers thus represented possible military action against Iraq as being self-defence against external security threats to the region from the then- President Saddam Hussein. A few news organisations played a contributory role to convince the readers and added fuel to the fire for the national interest. The first Middle East crisis occurred in August 1990, when Iraq attacked Kuwait. After this incident, there were concerns that another neighbour, Saudi Arabia, could be the next target of Saddam Hussein. Therefore, the US intervention was necessary to protect all the oil-rich Arabs from the Saddam factor and Saudi Arabia played a significant role in supporting the US initiative to take military action against Iraq. Before going to war, a country requires concrete evidence and arguments to justify the positive angle of the war and this is the most important element to motivate the Army to get the go-ahead for action.

4.1.1 Media Frames used before the first Iraq War of 1991 (also known as the Gulf War)

News Frame 1 “Saddam says Seizure of Kuwait is Permanent”

This front-page story was published on August 07, 1990 by Patrick Tyler in The Washington Post. This disclosed that Saddam Hussein and the US charge d’ affairs Joseph Wilson had a meeting in Baghdad and Saddam refused to withdraw, claiming that Kuwait was Iraqi territory, and there was no possibility of negotiations. Saddam had also planned to invade Saudi Arabia in case Iraq’s oil pipelines, which pass through Saudi Arabia to other regional countries, were cut off. Iraq's objective behind the attacks was to control a violation of OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries). According to Iraqi sources, Kuwait had been stealing the oil of Iraq for a few weeks and not respected the guidelines of OPEC's production. One could further argue that Kuwait is located in the south of Iraq, so the oil flows downward. Later, the above newspaper story was taken up by the television channels and it gave the impression that the matter was quite serious with no hope of a diplomatic solution. News Frame 2 “The Beast of Baghdad”

This editorial column was published by Mary McGrory in The Washington Post. The content was supported by the Bush Administration (senior) and highlighted the issue that Iraq also intended to attack Saudi Arabia and the US was in a position to bomb Baghdad. News Frame 3 “Force Hussein to Withdraw”

Another column on the same theme by Jim Hoagland motivated the US army and the Bush administration (senior) to use military force against Iraq to protect the oil fields of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and maintain a strong influence in the Middle East. The Bush administration (senior) and the US corporate media placed effective pressure, putting more than 100,000 troops on standby on the Iraqi-Kuwait border. These were the initial claims by the Bush administration and Pentagon sources (Kellner, 1992). Frame 2 and Frame 3 are interlinked as they discussed Saudi Arabia’s insecurity. Joseph Wilson was a former US diplomat who wrote about this in his book, The Politics of Truth (2005). He was the last US official who interacted with Saddam before the 1991 war. In a

conversation in Baghdad, Saddam made it clear that he had no intention of conquering Saudi Arabia. He only demanded full control of Kuwait and in exchange, he could sell oil at a reasonable price to the United States. But the media portrayed the opposite and provided negative propaganda that Saudi Arabia might be the next target, and the US played their cards right. A successful disinformation campaign was worked by the Bush administration (senior) and, of course, the Pentagon to legitimise the US troops in Saudi Arabia. News Frame 4 “Rape of Kuwait / Another Hitler”

Hill & Knowlton Inc., one of the largest US public relations firms, was hired by the Iraqi government to seek the attention of the Americans and public opinion by showing the atrocities of innocent citizens. With reference to ‘another Hitler’, Gannett Foundation has carried out research on over 1,170 articles to find out the common elements that connect Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler (Le May et al., 1991, 42). The results suggest that Iraq's 17 million population cannot be compared with the 70 million in Germany. The army of Germany was the most powerful in the 1930s, which was again irrelevant as it could not be compared with Iraq's military forces. Iraq is mainly dependent on oil and petroleum exports (95%), whereas Germany is a powerful industrial country. Finally, Germany was a major imperialist superpower at the time of Hitler and Saddam was just a powerful leader in the region due to US backing and Iraq’s independence from Britain. News Frame 5 “Killing of Premature Babies in hospitals”

The Kuwaiti government group financed a propaganda campaign with the support of the PR firm (Hill & Knowlton). In October 1990, a tearful teenage nurse testified to the House of Representatives Human Rights Caucus that she had seen Iraqi soldiers remove 15 babies from incubators and leave them to die on the floor. This story also mobilised support for US military action. On January 6, 1992, The New York Times published a story that the unidentified female witness (the fake nurse) was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. The Kuwaiti government developed a propaganda campaign aimed at encouraging the American audience to accept the need for the first Iraq War and the Bush administration (senior) took advantage of this campaign to promote their agenda and achieve their goals.

News Frame 6 “An Iraqi Defector Tells of Work on at least 20 Hidden Weapon Sites”

A front-page story was published on December 20, 2001, by Judith Miller in The New York Times. In this news story, Judith Miller claimed that an Iraqi defector had disclosed secret information that WMDs existed in Iraq, as he had been working on this project, where there were chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and hospitals (Miller, 2001).

4.1.2 Media Frames used before the second Iraq War of 2003

News Frame 7 “US says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-bombs Parts”

This was a front-page story published on September 8, 2002, by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon in The New York Times, which claimed that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons at the time the White House was warning Saddam there would be severe consequences to his actions. The news also reported that Iraq had purchased aluminium tubes which were used for nuclear weapons production. Following this news article, Dick Cheney used it as a source on television and the Bush administration used the story to create fears of an Iraqi nuclear attack, (Boehlert, 2006, 223f). News Frame 8 “45 minutes from attack and Iraqis could have N-bomb in a year”

This headline was from a front-page story published on September 24, 2002, in The Evening Standard (the UK), published after Prime Minister Tony Blair submitted the dossier for military action and to join the coalition forces in the Iraq War 2003. News Frame 9 “BRITS 45 mins from doom”

This was a front-page story published on September 25, 2002, in The Sun (the UK). The news piece highlighted claims that there was a major threat to the British military forces deployed in Cyprus. News Frame 10 “45 minutes from a chemical war”

A front-page story published on September 25, 2002, in The Daily Star (UK) that said Iraq had the capability to hit Cyprus and destroy the whole island, and it was therefore unsafe for British citizens.

4.1.3 Independent Bloggers / Individual Frames during the Iraq War 2003

Three Prominent Cases of Social Media that challenged the Mainstream Media Individual Frame 11 a) Abu Ghraib pictures: Digital cameras were used to record the moments of everyday activities inside the detention cell, where Iraqi soldiers were mistreated, and acts of torture carried out. These pictures were then shared by colleagues, family, and friends. Basically, the torture pictures were self-representation of US soldiers inside the prison (Slewinski, 2006). The mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners was highly condemned (Amnesty International, 2003). The International Committee of the Red Cross had visited the prison and reported on the punishment and ferocious treatment of the prisoners of war (ICRC, 2004).

Figure 3 - Infamous photos of US Soldiers torturing Iraqi Prisoners.

Some US military personnel secretly provided evidence of torture, like Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford, a counterintelligence agent in military service who disclosed the war crimes inside Abu Ghraib prison and was sent back to the US due to bad health issues (De Batto, 2004). Another Sergeant in the US Army, Joseph Darby, was also known as the whistle- blower in the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. he received the photographs from Iraq and forwarded them on to the US Criminal Investigation

Command (CID), this resulted in a military inquiry being conducted into the illegal abuse of Iraqi detainees held in 2004. The results of the CID inquiry were produced in an official US Army Regulation Taguba report (2004). There is a resemblance between Abu Ghraib abuse pictures and a photograph taken between 1880 and the 1930s, which showed a cheerful American next to a naked black man hanged on a tree. A similar gesture was expressed in the Abu Ghraib photographs. In wars, the enemy with strength always goes beyond the limits to dehumanise the weak enemy. From this perspective, the Abu Ghraib incident was concluded to be “war porn”, a new genre of reality TV (Baudrillard, 2006). In April 2004, Seymour Hersh, an investigative journalist and political writer for The New Yorker magazine published a few photographs (Hersh, 2004). The advancement of technology, the internet and use of digital cameras by the military personnel facilitated the mainstream media to expose the Abu Ghraib war crime. In the beginning, the Abu Ghraib scandal snapshots were broadcast on the CBS news TV channel and the issue reached its peak. Later, it spread across the whole mainstream media in the United States and global media.

Figure 4 - Snarling dogs and enforced nudity Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison

Individual Frame 12 b) Salam Pax Blog: An Iraqi male blogger from Baghdad, who studied architecture in Austria and returned to Iraq. An educated online writer, Salam Pax communicated in a balanced and calculated manner. He avoided a conservative attitude in his concerns and was a member of the marginalised gay community in Iraq (Melzer, 2005). He started his blogging with “Where is Raed?” His initial idea for blogging was to communicate with a friend who went to study in Jordan and update him. The Baghdad blogger was not an ordinary internet user, as he did challenge war reporting in a new dimension by giving a touch of criticism to oppose mainstream mass media. Blogging is often referred to as being a technology of self (Foucault, 1988). This technology is based on the personal narration that indicates a combination of insecurity, feelings, fear, and disappointment for an offence (Lovink, 2007). Salam Pax, who had experienced the live war and witnessed the whole crime scene, claimed that the people of Iraq had cursed both the American government and the long-serving Baath Party of Iraq equally (Salam Pax, 30/03/2003). In his blogging, he used ‘I’ and that was crucial in building trust and gaining the confidence of the wider audience. His skills as an independent observer made him a decisive citizen journalist who could generate online content and bypass the traditional style of reporting in which he was quite successful. Salam Pax witnessed the whole event, used cyberspace, and projected the facts based on evidence (Whitlock, 2007, 25). Any confrontation with the most influential cultures and structures do affect the establishment (Hebdige, 1979). The Iraqi blogger was acknowledged by the Western news agencies and media organisations for his remarkable work. To verify his physical existence, Peter Maass of The New York Times magazine and Ray McCarthy of The Guardian (UK) managed to find him in Baghdad (Maass, 2003; McCarthy, 2003). He was offered a job at The Guardian Films (Salam Pax, 2005) and all of his blog writings were compiled into the form of a book (Salam Pax, 2003). This Iraqi blogger started as an independent online producer, before becoming a war correspondent for critical reporting, a filmmaker, and an author of a book. His blogs have inspired many other Iraqis to use the internet as an alternative medium to draw the picture on a larger canvas and critique the ideological model of war designed by the Americans and Britain.

Figure 5 - Salam Pax Book Cover.

Individual Frame 13 c) Riverbend blog: A young female blogger from Baghdad during the Iraq war of 2003, who used her name “Riverbend” for the blog “Baghdad Burning.” She had confused the audience about her identity by using the Western name and her actual location, either Iraq or out of the country. She had received appreciative email messages for being nominated as a finalist of the Samuel Johnson Prize for moderate political views, avoiding extremes of behaviour, and connecting freedom with human loss. The award was worth 30,000 British pounds. The blog also won third place in the 2005 Lettre Ulysses Prize for Reportage and a 2006 Bloggie award. She was highly inspired by the Iraqi male blogger Salam Pax, who was considered to be the father of all Iraqi blogs in 2003. Actually, Riverbend was commenting on Salam Pax's web page and Pax suggested that she start her own blog as she was a good writer. She was not sure

that her blog would become a book, and within a few months of blogging, she was approached with several full-time job offers. The reason for her blogging was to showcase the fear, instability, and insecurity that was being felt from a woman's perspective, which was missing in the mainstream media, and how the female gender had suffered throughout Saddam Hussein’s regime. It was a subtle demonstration of online attention-seeking that emphasised the negative consequences of war. On a wider scale, the media coverage revolved around Saddam and Weapons of Mass Destruction, but people's anger and frustration, and the suffering of people who needed the basic necessities of daily life, like electricity, water and security, were all neglected. The mainstream media was busy providing false reporting. Riverbend wrote that I am not Anti-American, but Anti-occupation; the presence of foreign troops in Iraq had entirely disturbed her routine life. Even she expressed that she didn’t support Saddam’s decision to continue. For Iraqi officials, she wrote that none of them felt pain for the local population or patriotism, they were just in power to fill their pockets and flee the country after their retirements. She had been raised abroad as a child and was lucky to continue reading and writing in the English language through the support of her parents. She was fond of classic novels written by George Orwell, Jane Austin, William Thackeray, Charles Dickens, and William Faulkner, as well as Russian and French pieces of literature translated into English. The Bronte sisters changed her life. There was an official ban on the import of foreign books, so she asked people and friends coming from abroad to bring some. She kept her blog active for three continuous years during the war. There were seven leading blogs and ‘Baghdad Burning’ operated by a young English- speaking Iraqi woman, was one of them. She disagrees with the idea that bloggers are journalists, as blogging’s aim differs from the structure of journalism. Her approach was different: "blogging requires you to sit for hours and communicate thoughts, idea, frustration, and fear to the global audience." She believed that Iraqis had a great history so they would rise again, but in the presence of foreign troops, the future was dark. Finally, she reached Syria as a refugee with her family in 2007. She wrote about her arrival and how she was allotted an apartment in a building that was occupied by other refugees from Iraq. Here are some extracts of her writing: "A 9-year old boy came to greet us with a cake. I am from Abu Mohammed's house, mama said if you need anything, just call us this is our number. The little boy also

gave the name and number of other Iraqi family and said we are all Iraqis in this number. It was very first time after a long time I cried for being away from home and felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003. (Online post in 2007). She posted on the tenth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad: “Finally, after all is said and done, we shouldn’t forget what this was about – making America safer… And are you safer Americans? If you are, why is it that we hear more and more about attacks on your embassies and diplomats? Why is it that you are constantly warned to not go to this country or that one? Is it better now, ten years down the line? Do you feel safer, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of the way (granted half of them were women and children, but children grow up, right?”. Riverbend argued on two key issues; she supported real politics based on the Western style of democracy, which she was missing under the rule of Saddam. There was political patronage in Iraq, all appointments were political and selected. Secondly, she had a high regard for democracy, but stability and normal life were lost due to war, so what was the objective of Western forces to attack Iraq on baseless allegations? The United States had liberated all Iraqi women but at the cost of chaos and heavy human loss.

Figure 6 - Baghdad Burning Book Cover

CHAPTER 5 5.1 Results/Findings Framing Theory was applied to understand the research process. Further, a textual analysis was used to examine news frames. In this study, I also analysed the blogs to identify individual frames that emerged in mass media coverage during the Iraq War of 2003. After these two analyses, I compared my findings and identified differences between media frames and individual frames. The media frames were selected from the two Iraq wars (1991 & 2003) and individual frames in the second Iraq War. As Entman discussed, the process of framing is to select some aspects of reality through a communicating text in order to promote a specific problem, evaluation, interpretation or recommendation (Entman, 1993). He concluded his discussion about framing theory with the statement, “Whatever its specific use, the concept of framing consistently offers a way to describe the power of a communicating text.” The findings have proved that the news framing shows the US-cantered war narrative, as has always been the case in previous wars involving the United States. The mainstream media has built a narrative of nationalistic approach and ideological values that connects the government, the armed forces, and the American audience in such a way that it has become the moral responsibility of the United States to provide freedom to the suffering people, promote democracy, and fight against all evil dictators. The study found that the news framing of the two Iraq Wars was purely based on American ideology and an approach for: • Human development • The liberation of Iraq • Good vs evil The analysis suggested that the print media’s news frames received strong support for defending the official pro-war stance by imposing the US ideology on global politics and destabilizing the opposing factors. In both wars, the news framing was a positive gesture that showed the US was still good and presented Saddam Hussein as evil. The WMD theme was widely framed and linked with the 9/11 attacks, due to a partnership between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. After the New York attacks, the news media framed Saddam Hussein as a major threat, saying that Americans could face similar attacks in the future, and so there was an urgent need to go to war in 2003.

There was already fear among the Americans, but these media frames increased concerns after the Twin Towers were destroyed. The news framing wholly presented Saddam as a bad, brutal and inhumane leader. News framing did not present him as a negotiator or call for a dialogue process before going to actual war. The only solution offered in the two wars was a military intervention that would provide Iraqis with freedom and democracy and save the lives of future generations because Saddam was brutal towards the people who resisted him. The Kuwaitis, with the support of the Bush (senior) administration in 1991, launched two successful media campaigns on the grounds of sympathy and helplessness. A Kuwaiti government group financed a propaganda campaign against Saddam Hussein by hiring the US public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton. This campaign was associated with a manipulative approach to convey feelings of pity and gain the attention of the American audience and convince them of the need for war. In a 1990 meeting with the House of Representatives Human Rights Caucus, a tearful teenage Arab girl disclosed that Iraqi soldiers had entered into Kuwait and removed fifteen babies from incubators in her presence. The chief of the PR firm was a close friend and loyalist of Bush (senior) and supported the idea of the campaign. He later organized the human rights session to hear the girl. In January 1992, it was disclosed by the ABC news TV channel that a doctor who was employed in the hospital denied the incubator controversy and had never examined the fourteen new-born babies. Hill and Knowlton had prearranged a focus group survey on the baby incubator story to find out the reaction of the American people. There was an aggressive attitude and people responded in favour of launching a campaign to Free Kuwait from Iraq. After this, there was news framing as countless stories broke in the US media about Saddam Hussein’s illegal activities, Iraq owning both chemical weapons and nuclear technology, and its ability to attack the regional allies of the US. The tabloid magazines even published his sexual crimes (Rifas, 1994). The US media had created an environment where decisive military action was a necessity to eliminate Saddam Hussein from politics and the narrative of the frames used by news agencies supported the cause of war. In international conflicts, the role of journalism is quite crucial in achieving the objectives. The Washington Post admitted in their news report that, “We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power. If the President stands up and says something, we report what President said” (Kurtz, op cit). The analysis of framing reveals the key frames that are widely used in wars, like the military frame, the conflict frame, the human-interest frame, and the orientalist frame (Arab-Muslim ideology). Thus, it is concluded that, during popular wars, there is always a warm relationship

between the media and the military to support the government’s agenda and propaganda. The human-interest frame had been used to give an emotional aspect, a kind of personal attachment that makes the news more dramatic and sensational in order to hold the attention of the audience. The corporate mass media used Conflict and Human-Interest frames to create war hype. Kellner (1992) argued that the US government had introduced a pool system of reporters to control information and images in the first Iraq War. The pool system of reporters had limited access to both the battlefield and to talk to soldiers. Their images and news reports were subject to censorship. They were taken to chosen sites and were escorted by the military. Hence, the whole corporate media was working under the supervision of the Bush administration (senior) and the Pentagon during the 1991 US-Iraq War. Patrick Tyler, who had served on both The New York Times and The Washington Post newspapers, was involved in wrongful allegations and propaganda during the 1990-91 US-Iraq War. As Entman stated, framing means to select a few features of the event and make them noteworthy by engaging with the audience in a communicative way. In the case of war, the most important aspect is the victory of the military in achieving their goal. The role of unilateral reporters and journalists have a different position. They cover the same event by highlighting the destruction, killings of innocent lives, loss of infrastructure, violence, and retaliation. Framing is basically what to choose and what not to choose for the news. For example, the 9/11 attacks in New York were portrayed differently across the media. Issue- specific framing provides further investigation into an event. Different countries and media organizations use framing according to their own objectives. Kumar (2006, 53) found in his studies that an environment of patriotism developed after 9/11 attacks, with the priority being national security. This promoted self-censorship and debate to crush the enemy. During the 2003 Iraq war, the deadly images of human loss were not covered. The war coverage was similar to the techniques applied in Hollywood movies (Mhamdi, 2016). Government agencies and media organizations developed a strong relationship to build a narrative that justified the need for conflict. For example, Kellner (2006) has elaborated about a joint collaboration between the government and the Western media during the 2001 Afghan war and 2003 Iraq war, which strongly influenced the audience through convincing tactics and effective communication tools.

A survey report of 2012 suggested that 60% of people had a lack of trust in traditional media due to inaccurate news. This leads Americans to follow all types of media platforms in lieu of the mainstream media (Pew Research Centre, 2013). The media frames by the print publications thus represented the viewpoint of the US and the UK governments. In order to find out if journalists write differently when they are covering international wars as an enemy and a threat, this research study has examined possible differences in the framing of mainstream news, independent weblogs, and other internet content. The researcher only selected news stories that dealt with the two Iraq wars, US politics, and public interest. By 2004, after one year of the Iraq War, the mainstream media had failed badly to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction, which was the whole propaganda of the war, but they did accept their mistakes and relied heavily on the Bush Administration (junior), the White House, and the Pentagon. The two major US newspapers had both fired their reporters and editors, including Judith Miller, who was known for her negative coverage of Iraq’s “Weapons of mass destruction” program. Her continuous reporting, both before and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was based on inaccurate information. The mainstream media has the power to reshape the interpretation of war for the audience and often suggest an idea that can cause a war (Carver, 2015). The traditional media focus on the possible cruel acts of an enemy and ignores the success and failure aspects of war (Kalivas, 2001). The high volume of information that spread through the media in order to justify the difference between terror and violence, as well as form a quick opinion, confused people (Diaz, 2014). British newspapers reported that Cyprus could be destroyed by missiles from Iraq, with a photo of tourists at a beach resort in Cyprus, giving the impression that Cyprus could be destroyed by Iraqi missiles and the prime targets were British military and tourists (Pascoe- Watson, 2003). These missiles had a range that was capable of hitting Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Israel, and a number of other US military bases in the Gulf region. The UK newspapers followed the stance of the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair when he presented the horrifying 14-point dossier in parliament. Saddam Hussein was accused of buying uranium from Niger to use in nuclear weapons. Tony Blair said the evidence was clear and no option was left other than taking military action along with the international community. It is the art of the desk editors to frame the stories as per the political conditions in order to fit the agenda of the government and turn military action into reality (Shinar & Stoiciu 1992). Examples include the Romanian Revolution and the Gulf War reporting of the 1990s. More

recent examples of similar framings are the Arab Spring, Saddam, Gaddafi, Mubarak and Assad of Syria. Media fuels the government’s stance by setting national unity frames. The relationship between the media and conflict situations is significant. There are two basic reasons for this scenario. Firstly, coverage of war and conflict is recognized as being valuable to the major news value for media organizations as they make more money, increase advertising and achieve high ratings as a result. Secondly, the public interest attracts a bigger audience and increases viewers due to the complexity of global security affairs, chiefly terrorism. The media as a mass communicator has played the role of both an informant and a propagandist throughout history. The information spread by media vehicles can be misinformed and manipulated in order to mould the views of the viewers/readers; hence, the mainstream media is a powerful tool used to control public opinion. Knightley (2002) argued that outright propagandists are basically war correspondents for the state and the military. Both the government and military unit, with the support of the media, organise their aims and policies. The media industry takes full advantage in order to increase their business by showing the armed forces in competitive corporate media. There are the mutual interests of the media, military and the state in popular wars, like the 1991 US-Iraq war, 2001 US-Afghan war, and the 2003 US-Iraq war. An alternative media has proved to be an effective emerging medium, as it has provided an opportunity for unheard voices to express their concerns and share experiences, especially in times of war. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and blogs all challenged the dominance of mainstream media during the Iraq War of 2003. The importance of social networking sites on the internet rises during conflicts and the mainstream media has accepted the reality of the internet – that how common people present their actions and thoughts has significance in a democratic society. Since the 2003 Iraq War, audiences are much aware of the politicised activities of the media and the biased war coverages of the two Iraq wars and Afghanistan war. Traditional media is a one-way communication, the audience has to trust or distrust. The new media (internet), however, gives the audience the scope and capacity to express their instant reaction to a recent development. With the expansion of Android phones and a video calling feature, recoding and other applications have given people the confidence to reveal the other side of the news story in a way that was not possible in the past. Throughout the 2003 Iraq war, Saddam Hussein and Iraqi officials were not in a position to show resistance by attacking Kuwait, Iran or Saudi Arabia.

5.2 Discussion A qualitative textual analysis was used to interpret the pre and post-war scenarios that were portrayed through news media frames and to highlight missing facts by the individual frames through blogging and social media. The objective of the study was to thoroughly investigate the headlines, front-page stories, text, blogs and photographs that were used before and during the two Iraq wars. This study has explored both US and UK newspapers because the mass media organisations of these two countries were on the frontline of the push to go to war. The New York Times and The Washington Post are the two most powerful news sources in the US, with a global reputation and a big impact on public opinion. The mainstream media has a long history of supporting the efforts of the government during wars, such as the Spanish-US war of 1898. This was the first entry of the US onto the global stage of imperialism, and the news media played a vital role in winning the public opinion for war. US newspapers made accusations against Spain without solid reasons, particularly publications owned by William Randolph Hearst. The Vietnams War started with the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 when the Americans blamed Vietnam for attacking the Maddox first, which was later proved to be untrue. Most people had been brainwashed by the propaganda and lies sent out by government agencies, the public relations department and the mainstream media. The media and the Western governments had done a great job in engaging people to talk about security threats and the reasons for entering Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years by using effective communication tools and strategies. The first Bush administration supported the fabricated story of Iraqi troops tearing Kuwaiti babies from incubators. This was the justification presented by the US for war and they entered Iraq to save the oil fields of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the Iraq-Kuwait war in the 1990s. Countries at war tend to use propaganda to control things in a way that makes military action legal in order to destroy the enemy and safeguard the region from terrorism, to free another country’s people from a dictator OR to protect world peace. The convergence of these two trends has seen the media integrating into the military-industrial complex even further. Obviously, people who are associated with arms and ammunition manufacturing must run their businesses by selling bullets and bombs; it’s a well-established industry and global need. This was the ideological model of war used in the 2003 Iraq war: the right to defend yourself. An enemy is excluded from the political community and must be destroyed (Moufee, 1997, 4).

For example, WMDs were the universal selling point of the war. One of the major targets of the state’s propaganda efforts is the mainstream media and a wide range of information management techniques in order to influence the news media. Media practices remain firmly embedded. The hegemonic model defines the self as “positive” and the enemy as “negative”. During war coverage, a correspondent doesn’t take sides, because he/she is a citizen of the world. There is a long history of war correspondents whose propaganda was based on lies. There are pressures on media and journalists if it is a popular war. American lies were exposed for the very first time during the Vietnam War, due to the free press access to the battlefield. So, after the Vietnam War and Gulf War of the 1990s, it was decided to introduce embedded reporters that were attached to the troops. A pool of trusted journalists, who could be relied upon and expected to promote patriotic agenda was sent to the war zones. The media remains controlled and restricted. It follows the required procedures, practices and preferences of the dominant representations (elite), the government side, national interest and other practical problems faced during wars. Media economy is highly concerned and matters a lot because its end goal is to generate revenue. Therefore, war is correlated with the influence of profit-making and ratings, as both are basic media structures for the state-run TV channels. Media, government strategies, and pro-war arguments; every time the superpowers’ mechanism of information control was successful. It is important to identify media control practices in democratic societies, particularly in the coverage of more recent controversial wars. The media, whether it’s the traditional printed press, radio, or television, has departed from its prime task. The audience can better assume irrelevant expectations from journalism. Two very important co-existing factors need to be discussed here, in order to get a better understanding and the bigger picture: • The development of the testing of government information control strategies over the last three decades • The for-profit media that promotes propaganda due to its structural limitations The Gulf War of CNN (1990) and the Iraq war of Al Jazeera (2003) were both major economic achievements for these media organizations. Different authors have discussed war coverage as entertainment and propaganda selling. Douglas Kellner, who highlighted the crisis of democracy in the 21st century, argues that the media has become the “arms of conservative and corporate interest” due to the concentration of ownership. Media, instead of acting in the interests of the public, gives importance to the interests of the political and economic elites instead. Mainstream media is a whistle-blower in the form of an agenda-

setting monopoly. According to the Cultivation Theory in media, the more an audience watches something, the more likely they are to believe it. The print media preferred war through pictures and accused Spain of causing the 1898 US- Spain conflict. A photojournalist was sent to Cuba by The New York Journal, whose duty it was to send pictures so that his editor in the US could support the war in the print. The US President, McKinley, was against conflict but the war broke out because of media pressure and public opinion. Professional environments, political contexts, and economic constraints are the answer to the media’s attitudes and behaviours in conflict and war coverage. On the one hand, there are multiple correlation levels of media psychology, such as culture, economy and technology, and on the other, there is violence and war to grab the attention of the masses and form public opinion in favour of war. The conventional news values are so grounded in conflict, to the extent that when peace appears to be taking hold in a particular area, it is time for the journalists to leave (Wolfsfeld, 2004, 15). As Terzis (2005) showed, every country is different in terms of its working environment and local conditions, laws, the levels of diplomacy, government policy, direct and indirect pressures, press freedom and censorship laws. Other relevant concerns are professional barriers, individual responsibility and the competition of the industry. It all varies from country to country; for example, a case study of Greek and Turkish ties showed that the journalists and news reporters are respected as soldiers of the national army and given military status when it comes to news coverage in Greece and Turkey. In both countries, the journalist community is not allowed to participate and react individually but are forced to follow the government’s script and protect the national agenda. In the case of disobedience, the journalist is fired in Greece and state media laws mean it is not easy to get new employment due to security concerns and disloyalty. Similarly, Turkish media personnel face a harsh time due to enacted legislation so that if a story goes against the national agenda it leads to imprisonment. MSNBC fired Phil Donahue following the US invasion of Iraq. His shows always topped the ratings, but his views differed with the ideology of war. The majority of news reporters and journalists shared an insight story during the early days of the Iraq War (2003), but the fear of losing a job existed in every newsroom in the United States, as whoever was critical and tried to oppose the government stance was sacked and tagged as unpatriotic and a threat to the national action plan.

Dan Rather, who served on CBS television for 20 years, told John Richard Pilger (2010) that loyal journalists were often paid extra money in addition to their handsome packages to promote certain issues. PR companies are often hired for readymade stories and strategies that will attract more audiences to watch the news. There are high chances of fake content during times of war and conflict because everything is possible due to the tough competition. The culture of breaking news in the 24-hour transmission makes hard to maintain accuracy, and the news broadcast business has minimal checks and responsibility. The main priorities are high ratings and being the first to break news in order to generate high revenues from advertising. Author Vincent Bugliosi discussed this in his book the negative claims of the Iraq war and the communication mechanism used by the Bush administration. According to the Intelligence report of October 1, 2002, given by CIA and 15 intelligence agencies, the words used were, “We Assess / We Judge that Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.” Following the Intelligence report, a White Paper was also presented to the Congress, to media, and the American people, and then shared with the international community. In this document, the words, “We Assess / We Judge” were removed and replaced by an opinion-based fact that Hussein had WMDs and he was a severe threat to the US and global security. The CIA and other intelligence agencies reached a consensus that there was no concrete evidence that Saddam was a hazard. Several important facts of classical intelligence report were not added to the white paper. This is a clear indication that the conflict was charged on baseless allegations because the classical report differs from the white paper. The modern-day media is a victim of conspiracy theory. Instead of being watchdogs, it participates actively and promotes the propaganda of the leadership. The lies become the headlines of the mainstream media. Here are a few examples of headlines reported by admired news organizations: “Saddam has ties to Al-Qaeda” and “Iraq has mass destruction weapons”. Both of these were reported by CNN. “Saddam held talks on alliance with Al-Qaeda”, reported The Guardian (UK newspaper). The New York Times reported, “Bush Aides Now Say Claim on Uranium was Accurate”. Fox News has always supported the war; the stance of the Bush Administration that WMDs had been found and confiscated. President Bush said, “This will not be a campaign of half-measures, we will achieve victory.” The corporate media really sold the war in a very professional manner and made trillions of dollars on the shoulders of the innocent dead bodies of Iraqi citizens and the money of American taxpayers.

PR firms in the United States and the United Kingdom were given huge amounts of cash to launch TV campaigns against Iraq and in favour of war. A leading PR company, namely Bell Pottinger, a UK-based organization for public affairs and political communication campaigns, received a sum of $540 million to make fake terrorist videos during the Iraq war. Martin Wells worked for Bell Pottinger from 2006-2008 and was stationed at a highly secured place inside US Camp Victory in Baghdad. Martin was told before reaching Iraq that he had to look after the news department, to compile still images and raw footage for major news agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom so that the mainstream media could broadcast and publish them for news items. His duty was to alter the images and videos in a way that it looked like bombings, blasts, suicides, kidnappings or disturbing content from Iraq was carried out by Al-Qaeda. The aim was to tell the world that the extremist group’s presence was obvious in the country and it was helping Saddam Hussein. The bitter truth was that the attacks were carried out by the US Army or Iraqi soldiers loyal to Saddam. The Iraq War of 2003 was a collective effort of US and UK troops; therefore, media vehicles actively participated in both countries, based on falsehoods. Ryan Endicott, an American veteran participant, said ‘our duty was to frighten people, patrolling in neighbourhoods’. There were house-to-house search operations to arrest Saddam’s loyalists and supporters, but unfortunately, the common Iraqi person was not aware of terrorism and had no strong links with Saddam Hussein. The average Iraqi citizen is not a threat to the United States and global security. During an interview to the Russia Today TV channel, Endicott said: “Why was I ordered to kill them when they are innocent and neutral citizens of a country and no harm to superpowers?” Endicott said he was destroying the country on orders to protect freedom, democracy, and terrorism as a result of false claims. In this revolutionary information age, the media has a very valuable tole at times of conflict. Modern-day wars are more media-oriented in the way that they adopt info attacks, disinformation, and psychological warfare. Professor Johan Galtung mentioned in his book, ‘Global Glasnost’, that stories about elite people in elite countries are newsworthy if there is an element of negativity; whereas stories which are positive and deeply concern non-elite classes in non-elite countries are not newsworthy and often considered to be the least important by the mainstream media because of time and space constraints. The Western media cover wars with sophistication to make the issue debatable. The leading and powerful media organizations belong to dominant nations, such as CNN, BBC, and RT, so these TV channels are whistle-blowers in the way they highlight interesting

Western issues and the stance of their respective governments. On the other hand, underdeveloped countries, particularly the Third World, rely heavily on global TV news channels due to lack of staff and tight budgets. For this reason, major stories and headlines are copied from the big giants. Global media industry standards are widely followed, thus differentiating between the realities and propaganda is complicated. In countries where wars and conflicts are common and unrest happens from time to time, the reporting and coverage by journalists is far better than in established and developed countries. During wartime, it is quite difficult to maintain the decorum of journalistic practices because the situation gets highly politicized and there are multiple challenges for covering news, such as the degree of freedom given to mainstream media, pressures, social media and embedded reporting. There is great competition to become more patriotic and biased toward war. Indeed, the journalism industry has lost countless precious lives in seeking the truth and collecting facts and figures. For example, 63 news reporters and journalists were killed in the Vietnam War, which lasted for 25 years (Kianzad, 2005). During the Afghan war in 2001, the American media kept a balance in visuals by showing the 9/11 victims as well. The idea of relating the war to the World Trade Centre attacks (1999) was to convince the local and international TV audience about the need for the war to wipe out terrorism. Afghanistan was chosen as an enemy for two reasons – Osama Bin Laden’s presence there and it was the major hub of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV news channel, which was the only Arab TV with a Bureau office in Kabul, reported the victims of the war and covered the conflict from a different angle in comparison to the Western mainstream media. Later, the Al-Jazeera TV building was bombed and the whole infrastructure completely destroyed by American warriors. An excuse was given that a secret signal was coming from the building which was not in favour of human health. The BBC’s investigative team tried to get the details but was unsuccessful because the Pentagon denied giving any clarification. In the Iraq War of 2003, Al-Jazeera TV avoided establishing a well-equipped office in Iraq because of its previous bad experience. Even the independent journalists and reporters were at risk of losing their lives. The Palestine Hotel was attacked for the reason that non-embedded journalists had stayed there during the war, and two Al-Jazeera news staff were killed there due to the airstrikes. This place has long been favoured by journalists and media personnel. Tariq Ayub was a major loss for Al Jazeera TV; the other important fact was that he had formerly worked with Fox News.

The Palestine Hotel was badly attacked on the 20th day of the US coalition war. This Hotel was also called the media building for many international news agencies. A few people associated with the war coverage died after suffering many wounds in different parts of the body, including Jose CousoPermuy, a cameraman associated with the Spanish television channel Telecinco. Another British cameraman and three staff members were injured as a result of the air shelling of independent journalists. In a joint venture, the US and Britain launched an Arabic TV news channel to grab the attention of the local population who followed the Western ideology. At the inauguration ceremony, both George Bush and Tony Blair addressed their feelings that Saddam Hussein was an enemy, the future of Iraqi citizens was bright, and the period of a long-serving fascist dictator would soon be over. The name of that TV channel was ‘Nahwa Al-Hurrieh’ (Towards Freedom). War journalism tends to be quick to judge and jump to conclusions in a short span of time, which is highly appreciated and fulfils the audience’s demand for quick results. Wars and conflicts are always covered when the issue has reached its peak, the media never covers small issues. The White House information was different as it was purely based on propaganda. The US had deliberately pre-planned for the war with Great Briton’s cooperation and the media playing a huge role. As revealed by the Think Progress report, the suicide rate among young soldiers had tripled. The soldiers did not find the idea behind the invasion of Iraq convincing, and they were not confident about their activities in providing protection and freedom from a long-serving dictator. It was only to the benefit of rich people in the United States and the elites and gave the minimum reimbursement to the soldiers when they returned home. A US soldier said that, when he reached to Iraq the very first time, the country had been running smoothly, including the economy, business, heavy traffic on the roads, schools and populated residential areas, but within the ten years, the US had bombed everything and returned Iraq to the Stone Age. For instance, the great loss to basic facilities, with no access to clean drinking water and medical facilities. The politics of constant lying is at its peak during popular wars, such as the Gulf War (1990), Iraq War (2003), Libya War (2011) and the controversial conflicts in Syria and Yemen. Media firms become richer by promoting evil and making easy money by converting minds to support wars. Greece and Turkey are not the only countries with strict laws for news coverage, it’s also a global phenomenon. The example of Pakistan and India is very relevant and depicts a clear picture of the government laying down obstacles in order to promote a policy agenda on the

Kashmir dispute. Peter Gregg Arnett, a New Zealand-US dual national, has worked for National Geographic magazine and various television networks in the United States. During 2003. he was associated with NBC and lost the job for condemning US policy and the initiative of the Iraq War. Television viewing is just to share information; an audience cannot think or take any action; either the content on the screens is the truth or negative propaganda. The Iraq War of 2003 was based on the full propaganda of the United States and the United Kingdom. The superpowers had exploited the television viewer through visuals. There was no clarity on Iraq’s war, but the Americans believed the media could be used as a weapon to convince the people, and willingly or unwillingly, the reporters, journalists and news anchors did their job in order to protect the national agenda of the Western world. While the traditional media instil a sense of controlled, closed networks, the newer media enhance the activation of networks that are open for all. The expansion of digital cell phones with video capacity for sites like YouTube to disseminate them, and a growing multimedia video and documentary culture has grown, which challenges the dominance of mainstream corporate media. In an era of emergent digital media, the traditional media war correspondent has declined in importance, although their stories can gain significant influence and critical mass if they are circulated on the internet and global broadcasting circuits. Blogs, digital photography and video footage are all at taken up by mainstream media at a later stage. New digital media has changed the overall dynamics and proved to be an alternative and critical source of information. Through new media, a check on the misdeeds of government and corporate media is now possible. The new media seriously defeated the US mainstream corporate media in the Iraq War of 2003. Information management has developed together with new media technologies and computer-based technologies have transformed the weapons of war, and media images have turned into entertainment. The media organizations and journalists in war coverage have become direct actors in international relations. In order to confront the ideological models of war, internet, mobile phone, and social media platforms can play a significant role in revealing the truth. The Salam Pax blogger, the Riverbend blogger, the Military blogs, and the Abu Ghraib pictures have proved to be an open challenge to the hegemony and represent the loss of control over the counterstrategies designed by the US government. It is not wrong to say that the pictorial facts of Abu Ghraib detention cell were an inside job by the American military administration. Few soldiers were part of the idea and sharing the picture confused the

mainstream media. This would definitely explain why, to some extent, the military blogs were negatively used to oppose the Bush administration’s war plan. Social media has played an imperative role in exposing the dark side of aggression, fear, anger, and hatred, due to the individual user-generated content on the internet. Blogs are personalized with a distinct narrative. Weblogs can be defined in a variety of ways, as alternative citizen journalism with its own media content, spaces for debate, and expression of opinions to inform family and friends. The blogger community is full of contradictions. For instance, in order to differentiate between public and private content – what should be public opinion and what remains private – it is sometimes hard to decide if particular content is for alternative media or mainstream media. Blogs and mainstream media differ at the level of authorship/content because a blogger has more liberty than mainstream media does. Traditional journalism is also facing a lack of funds and tough competition due to digital advertising. With advertising sales heavily moving to Facebook, earnings and revenue- generating sources have dropped globally. Digital journalism is more demanding because people feel more connected to the internet. Social media is an outbreak of public anger; within minutes ‘# tags’ are breaking news on Facebook and Twitter that go beyond traditional journalism. As the “War on Terror” continues, we can expect more news in the future and more sophisticated methods of information control. The New York Times editorial on 25 May 2004 discussed how coverage of the Iraq War was controversial and questionable. Several scholars have argued that the news media have accepted that all information regarding Iraq lacks authenticity. The United States needs a change in policy now. History depicts that powerful countries create strategies of propaganda and half-truths so that they can dominate the world. In the long run, global politics is heading towards a new era of imperialism (might is right). Huge budgets are allocated that enable public relations communications and campaigns to draw attention to war and, as a result, traditional media is getting wealthier and gratifying the interest of the status quo. The ability of the traditional media to influence, expose or mobilize is limited, although not entirely blocked, as has been documented in the historical Iranian revolution, the Palestinian national awakening and the ongoing Iraq, Syria and Yemen conflicts. This emphasizes the importance of international and social media.

5.3 Drawbacks of citizen journalism (online media) • Angela Phillips (2010, 101) concluded her understanding of online journalism by stating it is similar to the old style of reporting but in new bottles (online), rather than following democratic principles for news, and so the internet factor has not achieved anything extraordinary. The majority of journalists still believe that professional journalism depends on reliable sources. • Many tweets during the Arab Upspring in Egypt came from outside Egypt and the locals believed them to be inland produced online content, this is called hybrid war. • Researchers and scholars have highlighted some ethical and moral concerns regarding the use of social media by the ordinary masses. Citizens don’t take ethical standards into consideration, which are highly regarded by professional journalists. Alternative media is still a premature concept and is referred to as being an insufficient and under-researched topic in the social sciences, or in other words, a less verified topic. Although it’s an emerging medium, it is still an under-discussed area and not well understood by researchers; therefore, it has a weak position. According to many researchers and authors, it is quite difficult to find enough information on alternative media and it is ironic to say that less has been discussed in the books (e.g. Beck et al., 2004; Burkart, 2002; Gill and Adams, 1998; Hartley, 2002; Maletzke, 1998; Schirato and Yell, 2000).

5.4 Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research A few limitations of this research study must be acknowledged and could be undertaken to add new findings in the future: • The content/textual analysis of the news stories was selected before the start of the wars (1990 and 2002). • The newspaper selection was limited to only five from the US and the UK. • Individual frames were discovered in this study that challenged the hegemony of news frames by mainstream media. Individual frames included in this study were the most relevant to the 2003 Iraq war and received enormous attention and encouragement from internet users and were even covered by the mainstream media due to their popularity and authentic reporting. • Future research could investigate additional news sources in order to expand the number of news stories that are useful for detailed observation on news framing and how the media frames are constructed by news organizations.

• Future research could explore further research on the scope of individual frames during wars when it is difficult for war correspondents to report from the battlefields. In such situations, the ordinary masses have a stronger influence on political knowledge. • Future studies could analyse war coverage by the non-elite media and the hurdles in their way, as well as why non-elite media is less concerned about framing the war propaganda. • Various studies have explored the future growth and importance of positive outcomes in the area of alternative journalism. Despite the many challenges that face alternative media due to its credible sources, the future is still bright and there are ways to overcome the obstacles. • There is a need to explore why much attention was given to Salam Pax blogger in the 2003 Iraq War and less coverage to fundamentalist bloggers like female Riverbend. 5.5 Conclusion This paper has presented a thorough analysis of how Western print media news stories, editorials, and opinions argued for an urgent military attack on Iraq twice, without considering the moral and social concerns, huge loss of innocent lives and post-war consequences. The elite press of the US had always been a slave to, and supporter of, US foreign policy during wars. The misadventure of Abu Ghraib prison was another tremendous success for the investigative journalism of the mainstream media to broadcast photographs from private domains. The mishap of torture and abuse was a great disappointment for the top opinion-makers and news organizations in the United States but the media giants tackled the situation smartly in order to safeguard the image of the Bush administration (junior) by stating that there were some bad apples in the US Army who worked on the night shift (Bennett et al., 2006; Brockman, 2005). Journalists can take full advantage of the information provided by the bloggers, but during war and conflicts, the state and military actors restrict access to bloggers’ content, which affects the reporting on war and terror. The new ways of receiving news and information would not be supportive of objective reporting but it did provide a complex attitude of multiple ideas on events and news coverage (John Pavlik, 2001, 24). Online platforms and the rise of citizen journalism have created an

environment of massive conversation and established a network of the community that discusses issues and offers a wide range of options (Dan Gillmor, 2006, xxv). During the Kosovo War in 1999, people were using online platforms for communication and sharing information on personal web pages, emails, message boards, and chatrooms. The relief organizations were also using their websites to update people on health care and lifesaving information. The international journalists, reporters, and war correspondents were told to exit Serbia by March 1991 and many journalists later followed the email strategy. Some top journalists also expressed an optimistic approach to bloggers, describing them as a very useful source of information. The role of bloggers has contributed a lot to traditional journalism and the journalist community admires the influential role they play and considers there to be a shift in the model of journalism. Today’s journalism isn’t based on the official government stance; instead, it reflects the opinions of citizens (Gans, 2004, 313). New media (the internet) has drastically changed traditional newsrooms and challenged the mainstream media landscape. People are now well connected in the form of social groups and online networks, and individuals openly discuss their opinions. Blogging used during war and conflict provides the possibility of presenting a different perspective to that of the traditional style of news reporting (Maher, 2006). A blog is a forum that allows people to express a personal opinion without any of the barriers of professional journalism being applied, like gatekeeping. It’s an unmanaged space that is open to everyone (Stanyer, 2006). Bloggers do not always have a challenging approach to the mainstream media, they can be flexible and negotiate a critical position. Occasionally, bloggers with a neutral approach are hired by the mainstream media, such as Salam Pax during the 2003 Iraq War. This blogger used a personalized account for alternative reporting and provided a contrast with the traditional media images of cheering Iraqis. Military blogging were narrations of eyewitness accounts and included power positions and anti-war positions (Wall, 2006). Later, some military employees who were part of the Iraq War had to bargain with the military command structure. The mainstream media had disclosed the violent pictures of the prison where Iraqi soldiers were beaten and threatened by US troops. Obviously, the pictures were taken by US forces and shared through personal networks and social media accounts to friends and family in the United States. Such pictures were later broadcast on mainstream media in the US, and this opened a new Pandora’s box of atrocities by foreign soldiers in Iraq. The alternative medium of reporting allows everyone to communicate and perform their expertise in everyday experiences by using personal accounts on the internet.

As far as bloggers are concerned, they are similar to professional journalists, but they can just bypass editorial policy and are exempt from the gatekeeping process. In the case of the Abu Ghraib controversy, the leverage went to the mainstream media to break the story and expose the system. Salam Pax was a truly alternative voice and challenged the dominant mainstream media for their projection and false coverage. But, at the same time, alternative media didn’t prove to be effective and worked in rather the same way as the mainstream media, as patriotic military bloggers followed an extreme form of national love and violence for their enemies. Similarly, alternative media was used to keep the photographs of the brutal behaviour in Abu Ghraib secret and were initially circulated in the inner circle of the army. Weblogs could be defined in many forms, like citizen journalism, participatory tools or participatory journalism. Activists self-produced online content, spaces for debate, personal understanding and a social platform to share information with friends and family on routine issues (Atton, 2004; Kahn and Kellner, 2004; Deuze, 2005; Tremayne, 2006; Keren, 2006). Blogs are “personalized journalism” and a writer is a first-hand source using a personal account to interact with the audience; it’s a two-way communication (Allan 2002, 127). Blogging is a forum where gatekeeping and filtration doesn’t work to express personal analysis (Stanyer, 2006, 405). The Baghdad Blogger (Salam Pax) was a Western-educated Iraqi architect that wrote his first blog “Where is Raed?” for a close friend who was out of Iraq during the 2003 Iraq conflict. According to some observers, the Iraq war of 2003 was an internet war due to online communication. The role of individual framing through social media to reform political structure needs to have strong support among the people who intend change to happen; otherwise, these groups will be ignored and paralyzed in society. Their small-scale media participation will remain at risk and fragmented. They cannot achieve their objective to transform society. The basic concern is in self-organized, small-scale community media content as citizen journalism is not sufficient to reach a larger audience and challenge the political structure. Therefore, alternative media options should cater to a larger public sphere; otherwise, they will remain isolated and oppressed. The end goal of alternative forms of media content is to challenge the dominant capitalist form of media production. In elite journalism, the reporters and journalists are salary-based slaves, who confront daily corporate limits and political and cultural pressures due to state laws. According to Marx’s writings on the press, it should be critical, not commercial (Marx, 1842, 71).

There is a consensus among researchers, postmodernists, and post-Marxists that without unity, it is more challenging for the majority in the public sphere to reform the political structure. The masses will remain subordinated if they fail to promote solidarity among themselves. Alternative media is also an under-researched category in the social sciences for oppressed voices. There are different terms used to represent this category, such as critical reporting on news, self-organized, citizen controlled, self-mannered, self-owned, non-commercial, non- advertising media, self-help initiatives, self-expression and potential for change. It is an approach beyond capitalism because this form of media is free from the ratings and advertising profits that are owned by influential individuals of a society. Examples of a few oppositional new journals that act professionally and stress the concern on global politics are: • New Internationalist (largest left-wing publication in the UK) • Le Monde Diplomatique (a monthly critical publication in terms of global reach and circulation – French) The above two news journals publish critical content and have professional editorial teams, but their readership is a niche audience. Alternative media refers to challenging stereotypes, counter-hegemonic, biased media, culture, and various forms (Watson and Hill, 2003, 172). There is a need to establish and explore more theories on an alternative theory; for instance, in the current scenario, alternative media is strongly connected to anarchist perspectives (cf. e.g. Atton, 2002). Anarchists believe that people can organize themselves to meet their needs and this is the most extreme form of a belief in freedom. We need to connect an alternative media theory with the Marxist perspective that alternative media should be a powerful medium to question the dominant group of society. Alternative media should be regarded as critical media to make it a strong medium in order to challenge the established norms of the global political system. Traditional media practices are based on manipulation, whereas alternative media serves the purpose of a critical atmosphere, a true public interest. Critical reporting enables intellectuals to become a strong voice and to counterargue the corrupt practices of mainstream media. The continuous rise of the internet will definitely acknowledge the importance of alternative media for future researchers in the field of social sciences.

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