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News Media Coverage of the Iraq War in Basra, Fall 2007: A case study in “spinning” news for the state Kurt Lancaster Abstract By examining several mainstream press stories from The New York Times, CNN.com and the Associated Press during the fall of 2007, the author argues how mainstream news media have mostly failed to examine and put into headlines one of the devastating side effects of the occupation of Iraq: armed militias exerting harsh conditions on the citizens of Iraq, especially in the city of Basra, the site of one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the world. This failure stems from the fact that most of the media appear compliant and complicit in adhering to the government’s presentation of conditions in Basra − that it appears to be improving under “regime change.” News sources not beholden to this influence, the alternative news sites of Salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor, BBC News, and Juan Cole’s Informed Comment blog published stories challenging the views presented by the state, sourcing news outside official government channels. By doing so, readers find that the rise of armed militias in Basra caused corruption in the election process, resulting in a stagnation and decay of Basra’s infrastructure, the loss of jobs, and the rise of Taliban-like religious edicts taking away women’s freedom, as well as music from the public places of the city, which was once considered the Venice of the East. Full Text: PDF

For more than two centuries, newspapers have been the indispensable source of public information and a check on the abuses of government and other powerful interests. And they still reach a vast and growing audience. Daily print circulation has dropped from a peak of 62 million two decades ago to around 49 million, and online readership has risen faster, to almost 75 million Americans and 3.7 billion page views in January, according to Nielsen Online.

But no one yet has unlocked the puzzle of supporting a large newsroom purely on digital revenue, a fact that may presage an era of news organizations that are smaller, weaker and less able to fulfill their traditional function as the nation’s watchdog. “I can’t imagine what civil society would be like,” said Buzz Woolley, a wealthy San Diego businessman who has been a vocal critic of the paper there, The Union-Tribune, and the primary backer of an Internet news site, VoiceofSanDiego.org. “I don’t want to imagine it. A huge amount of information would just never get out.”