CNN and Iraq War Coverage

The coverage of the Iraq War is quickly replaced today by the coverage of stories such as Health Care, Israel, and Afghanistan. Iraq seems to be the topic of yesterday, but many people argue that it should not be that way. Families still have loved ones fighting for a cause that is no longer clear as day and the president continues to circulate troops through the region.

The CNN website has a page dedicated to the Iraq War titled The War in Iraq where they post all of the latest news stories. The top of the page has a “day to day war tracker” that updates major combats on a daily basis. They also have a casualty tracker which I find to be helpful for those families who continue to have loved ones fighting overseas. Other major sections include headline news stories, video, summary of weapons used, the world impact, and even interactive maps where users can take a graphical look at Iraq's military sites, population and geography. The global impact section I find to be interesting because it includes global reaction “for and against”, on the “home front”, and on the “war front”. This gives the reader varying opinions and doesn’t censor the opinions that oppose the war. This website is extremely user friendly and includes a vast amount of the resources necessary to answer many of the public’s underlying questions concerning the war.

Referring back to some of the exercises that we have done in class on the worksheets that ask “What questions do you need answered during War”? Well, many of the questions asked include casualty counts, who are the bad guys, what advances are we making, what technology we are using, as well as other general updates. In my opinion, this website answers all of these questions.

The major limitation of CNN’s website is the lack of update. For example when I clicked on the first ‘headline’ titled “Decapitation Attack Launched”, the article is dated March 20, 2003 (That’s 7 years ago!). The other articles varied from March of the same year to May 2003. Also, the War Tracker archive seems to stop at May 1 because “President Bush declared on May 1 that major combat operations in Iraq have ended". Although the information may be accurate, it is misleading because American troops continue to be circulated throughout the Iraqi region. According to The Washington Post in the article titled “Faces of the Fallen”, they report casualties due to Operation Iraqi Freedom as late as late February 2010 and early March 2010.

Many also argue that CNN does not report many Iraqi atrocities, but instead covers up reports of murder, torture, and planned assassinations via their Baghdad bureau. CNN’s chief news executive, Eason Jordan has even written an opinion piece in the NY Times titled “The News we kept to ourselves”. He claims that he heard and saw “awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff”. For this reason, they made the decision to keep the public in the dark regarding such mayhem.