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In an age of political PR, how did the Daily Mirror and the Sun report the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction before, during and after the 2002 Iraq War? How does this reflect on the ability of the press to act as a fourth estate?
Introduction
Before, during and after the most recent war in Iraq, the issue of weapons of mass destruction has remained a central debate.The alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the threat they posed formed the central argument for the government’s case for war and to this day, the failure of coalition governments to provide evidence of those weapons has prompted a debate about whether the media was negligent in its duty to inform the public and complicit with the apparent deceit of the government.
Accusations of both pro and anti-war bias against the broadcast media have led to a number of enquiries, such as the Hutton report which led to mass resignations throughout the ranks of the BBC, including the Director General, Greg Dyke, and Chairman, Gavyn Davies.
Much has been written about the BBC and the events covered by the Hutton report, however comparatively little attention has been paid by either the government or academics to the British national press.
While the majority of broadcast media did their best to appear objective and impartial, the privately-owned and partisan British press provided an unashamedly biased viewpoint on the issue of WMD.
In particular, the Sun and the Daily Mirror represented polar opposite perspectives on the case for war. Both newspapers are supporters of the Labour Party; however they represent the different new and old Labour values.
The positions of the two newspapers during the Iraq crisis and, in particular, the way they reported the issue of weapons of mass destruction, will form the basis of this investigation which will use the debate to help further the discussion about whether the press can still act as a fourth estate.
The Broadcast Media
The most recent war in Iraq has sparked a number of debates about the role of the media during times of conflict. The majority of texts written specifically about the reporting of weapons of mass destruction have focussed in particular on broadcast media.Broadcasters, and in particular the BBC, have been a common focus for study after the high profile Hutton Inquiry into the death of government weapons expert, Dr David Kelly. Dr Kelly apparently took his own life after he had been named as the main source for Andrew Gilligan’s report on Radio 4’s Today programme in 2003. Gilligan’s report, which was broadcast in May, suggested that the government had ‘sexed up’ the weapons dossier that supported the case for war.
Justin Lewis and Rod Brookes investigated what they described as the government-led attack on news organisations that it felt were undermining its case for war in Reporting war: Journalism in wartime (Allan & Zelizer, 2004). Lewis and Brookes argue that overall, the coverage of the crisis and conflict by British broadcasters was sympathetic to the government’s aims and point out that despite claims by the government that the BBC was anti-war, the BBC made greater use of coalition military sources than any other British broadcaster.
In Mediactive: Media War (Biressi & Nunn, 2004), Ros Brunt’s essay, Broadcasting and government panic in the Iraq crisis, also investigates claims that the broadcast media were too close to the government during the conflict. She argues that it is too simplistic to brand the media as either pro-war or anti-war and describes such accusations as ‘leaky’. She dismisses claims that the media had a pro-war and pro-government agenda and cites examples of programming where issues were raised that were uncomfortable for the government. In particular, she quotes a report by Rageh Omaar about the life of Saddam Hussein:
“In 1998 he [Saddam Hussein] used chemical weapons in the attack on Halabja during the campaign against the Kurds of Northern Iraq which killed over 100,000 civilians.
Saddam Hussein has not always been our enemy. Indeed, he was our ally when he committed this atrocity.
And he was supported by Britain and the US in his catastrophic war against neighbouring Iran: an eight-year titanic struggle which left a million dead and wounded and in which Saddam Hussein again used chemical weapons. But for the West he was a useful Bulwark against the spread of the Ayatollah Khomeni’s brand of radical Islam. And so support for him was maintained.”
Rageh Omaar, BBC News, 14.12.03
Cited in Ros Brunt (Biressi & Nunn, 2004)Brunt also defends the broadcast media against criticism of broadcasting propaganda. She argues that propaganda is different from inaccuracy because it suggests a deliberate act, while inaccuracy is inadvertent.
The National Press
While the majority of discussion focuses on the BBC’s reporting of the WMD issue, little has been written about the British national press and its treatment of the subject of Iraqi weapons.In Mediactive: Media War (Biressi & Nunn, 2004) Des Freedman’s essay entitled The case for war as portrayed in the national press recognises the isolated stance of the Daily Mirror in opposing the war, but he points out that after the war began, the anti-war movement lost momentum and the Mirror’s circulation dipped. As the newspaper is ultimately governed by market forces, it was forced to soften its anti-war stance. The publication’s history as a supporter of the Labour party also made its stance as an anti-war newspaper somewhat problematic.
The Daily Mirror was perhaps the most vehemently anti-war of the mainstream British media, however, recent discussions have focussed on whether even the anti-war media relied too heavily on official sources.
Jake Lynch (Biressi & Nunn, 2004) suggests that this over-reliance on official sources enabled the government to repeat its statements while allowing little time for opposing views. For instance:
“In a survey for Channel Four, which presented respondents with a menu of possible explanations, the ‘security threat’ [posed by Saddam] topped the poll, with 22 per cent; but only by a narrow margin from the most popular alternative view. Fully 21 per cent told pollsters they thought it was really all about oil.
A second poll, for the Pew Research Center, setting up the question in a different way, found the oil theory was shared fully by 44 per cent of the British and large majorities in many other countries.
Far from being ‘reflected to mirror the depth and spread of opinion’, however, this was almost entirely absent as an analytical factor in coverage of the build up to war.”
Jake Lynch, p113 (Biressi & Nunn, 2004)Lynch lists several factors and discussions that were prevalent in the public spheres that were rarely or never addressed by the media. Too few questions were raised in relation to the validity of government statements about WMD and the case for war.
In Tell me lies: Media distortion in the attack on Iraq (Miller, 2004), David Miller and David Cromwell claim that the media could have easily exposed the alleged deceptions:
“According to the Guardian/Observer website, Iraq has been mentioned in 7,118 articles between 1 January and 6 June 2003, with 961 articles mentioning “Iraq and weapons of mass destruction”. Out of these, Scott Ritter [former chief UNISCOM weapons inspector] has received twelve mentions and Rolf Ekeus [UNSCOM’s executive chairman] two…
…Ritter, the most outspoken whistleblower, was not interviewed by BBC TV News, Newsnight, or ITN in the months heading up to the war. He was last interviewed on a terrestrial BBC channel by David Frost on 29 September 2002.”
Edwards & Cromwell, p210 (Miller, 2004)Miller and Cromwell blame media as a whole for being complicit in the government’s war objectives by not giving enough credence to dissenting voices.
A qualitative study of the four newspapers was carried out by Howard Tumber and Jerry Palmer (2004). The study related to Dr Hans Blix’s report to the UN Security Council in 2003. Tumber and Palmer point out that although each of the newspapers is in receipt of the same information – i.e. the Blix report. Each publication interpreted the report differently.
“The Daily Mirror in its leader argues that the Blix report did not justify any war in Iraq; the news page reports (pp. 4-5) on the Security Council meeting highlight the need for more time for inspections and the negative responses by UN diplomats to its implication for US and UK policy but also includes and article by an ex-inspector which stresses the need to make Iraq accountable.
The Guardian’s coverage on its front page stresses that the US and the UK interpreted the Blix report as justification of their policy and the leader (p.21) condemns this ‘pre-scripted’ use of the report and rejected the US and UK interpretation as ‘mendacious spin’.
The Daily Telegraph leader states that the Blix report supports US and UK policy, and the front page report emphasises that Dr Blix ‘unequivocally’ states that Iraq has failed to disarm.
The Daily Mail leader says that the Blix report does not reveal a ‘smoking gun’ in Iraq, and condemns the ‘rush to war’. However, the news pages’ coverage (pp. 4-5) asserts that the Blix report provides ‘devastating ammunition for the US and Britain’ and that it is a ‘damning verdict’ on Iraq.”
p.88 (Tumber & Palmer, 2004)Tumber and Palmer’s analysis suggests that the emphasis of a story is generally in line with the editorial position and the left or right wing orientation of the newspaper.
Reporting the Gulf War
This view is supported in studies of previous conflicts such as Martin Shaw’s Civil society and media in global crises (1996), which looks at the response of the tabloid press to the Falklands and Gulf wars. Shaw says that newspapers, unlike TV, is informed by distinctive editorial stances and that mass-readership papers sensationalised and trivialised the war – reporting it as entertainment and printing bias views and propaganda.Shaw looks specifically at the Sun and the Daily Mirror. He says that during the first Gulf War, the Sun and the Mirror took similar stances, however the Sun was overtly nationalistic in its reporting style.
“Although the USA dominated the coalition, for the Sun this was a patriotic conflict, a re-run of the Falklands. Its 16 January front page was a Union Jack with a soldier’s head in the middle and the message: ‘Support our boys and put this flag in your window.’ The flag became a daily masthead for ‘the paper that backs out boys’.”
p.98 (Shaw, 1996)The Mirror, according to Shaw, adopted a similar patriotic stance, but aimed for the moral high ground instead of trying to ‘beat the Sun at its own game’. Despite supporting the war, it did also give column inches to anti-war voices:
“Editorials were quite clear on the need for the war: by January it was ‘too late for the Labour Party … to plead for more time for sanctions to have an effect’ … Despite this strong stance, the paper gave space to the left-wing alternative, reporting Tony Benn’s anti-war plea ‘straight’ the next day.”
p.101 (Shaw, 1996)During the previous Gulf War conflict, there had been little debate about the motives of coalition governments or the legitimacy of the conflict. Brian McNair (1995) pointed out that at this time there was little ambiguity in the media about right and wrong, but he points out a collective amnesia on the part of the press:
"The media, it is argued, should have applied its Fourth Estate, watchdog role to the event with more vigour, giving citizens a genuine opportunity to judge the rights and wrongs of allied policy, and the appropriateness of the military response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait …
… Media organisations were undoubtedly influenced in their editorial policies by the nature of the conflict, and the relatively unambiguous distinction between right and wrong which it presented. Many have noted correctly the hypocrisy inherent in the allies' position: it was they who armed and supported Saddam Hussein as he engaged in a murderous war with Iran, and gassed his civilians at Halabja and elsewhere.
p183 (McNair, 1995)The tabloids in particular have been guilty of reducing complex stories into punchy headlines and failing to put events in their wider context. This, according to Nicholas Jones, makes it tempting for politicians to disseminate information in a similar way. The ambiguity over the definition of WMD can be attributed to the soundbite nature of news. Jones identifies this culture in Soundbites and Spin Doctors (1996):
"Journalists have been accused of allowing themselves to be seduced by the soundbite, of letting the politicians dictate the news agenda with empty words and meaningless phrases."
p29 (Jones, 1996)The Fourth Estate
However, as Ralph Negrine (1989) points out, newspapers have a duty to inform the public because they are an important source of information for political news. In Politics and the Mass Media in Britain he says that although television has grown in importance as the primary source of political information, readers of newspapers attach more importance to the print medium for obtaining more detailed information about political events:"The media provide, in Blumler's words, 'the informational building blocks to structure the view of the world... from which may stem a range of actions'. Although these 'informational building blocks' combine with a multiplicity of political and social factors to direct an individual's action, they determine the limits of our knowledge and our perceptions of events and their causes."
p.3 (Negrine, 1989)This notion that the press is a primary source of information for voters means that the public rely on the press to expose scandal and abuses of power. The role of the press as a ‘fourth estate’ is a phrase first coined by Carlyle (1841). He said:
“Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but in the reporters’ gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.”
p.215 (Carlyle, 1841)Carlyle’s notion of the fourth estate has diminished over the years as commercial interests have become more prevalent and publishers are reliant on advertising revenues. Noam Chomsky (1989) has a more pessimistic view of the media in the developed world, which he describes as serving the state and corporate power. Although Chomsky talks mainly about the US media, his theories can be applied to the British press as well. He particularly points out that the media tends to give different amounts of coverage to international issues depending on whether the West is the aggressor or the victim. He says that public access to information is skewed by the press which means the real economic and political reasons behind government decisions routinely go unnoticed.
In Journalism: Truth or Dare (2003), Ian Hargreaves describes this watchdog role as public journalism but argues that it is not the place of journalists to act as a fourth estate:
“Public journalism, however, has attracted some powerful enemies within journalism. They argue that public journalism risks distorting the role of the journalist as an independent watchdog against power, and especially against governmental misbehaviour, by turning journalists into developers of policy and shapers of public opinion and so distracting reporters from their true mission of reporting without fear or favour.”
p.78 (Hargreaves, 2003)Public Sphere and Hegemony
Like Carlyle’s fourth estate, Habermas’s notion of the media as an instrument of public debate is also outdated due to the market-driven nature of the modern mass media. Habermas (1989) underlines the importance of the media in the public sphere but draws a distinction between the role of the early press in providing a voice for the masses and the present day market-driven press, which treats news as a commodity. The modern-day press responds to market demand rather than being the voice of public opinion.Nonetheless, the national press, especially the tabloid newspapers, report dominant ideas as common sense, spreading the dominant ideology as outlined by Gramsci’s hegemony theory. In the case of WMD and the tabloid press, this ‘common sense’ treatment of the subject by both sides of the tabloid press was prevalent throughout the weapons crisis. The notion of hegemony is a means by which those in power exert their dominant ideology over the subordinate classes. According to Monica Stillo (theory.org, 1999) Hegemony can be described in the following ways:
• A class had succeeded in persuading the other classes of society to accept its own moral, political and cultural values;
• The concept assumes a plain consent given by the majority of a population to a certain direction suggested by those in power;
• However, this consent is not always peaceful, and may combine physical force or coercion with intellectual, moral and cultural inducement;
• Can be understood as "common sense", a cultural universe where the dominant ideology is practiced and spread;
• Something which emerges out of social and class struggles, and serve to shape and influence peoples minds;
• It is a set of ideas by means of which dominant groups strive to secure the consent of subordinate groups to their leadership.
(Stillo, www.theory.org.uk, 1999)The majority of the national press was complicit in the winning of public support for the war, which was sold as a common sense solution to the alleged problem of WMD.
Propaganda Model
Chomsky and Herman also discuss the possibility that the media is responsible for coercing the masses in Manufacturing Consent (1988). They refer to a ‘propaganda model’ whereby money and power act as filters for the news, allowing the government and dominant private interests to put their message across. Herman and Chomsky say that the dissemination of propaganda is systematic and that the media ‘serve the ends of a dominant elite’. News demands mean regular reliable sources of news are required, these usually come from government or business sources, and it is this that holds up the normative order in society – reinforcing the status-quo.Missing Dimensions in Reporting
This pessimistic view of the media is echoed to a lesser extent by Jeremy Tunstall (Kuhn & Neveu, 1996). He identifies gaps and bias in European news, one of which is a failure to cover political scandals. He uses the example of Berlusconi’s media monopoly:“That Europe tolerates Italian media arrangements, which would not be tolerated within many other countries around the world, is a reminder not only of European weakness but of the inadequacies of European political journalism.”
p.236 (Tunstall, in Kuhn & Neveu, 1996)This view could also relate to the reporting of the Iraq war in assessing whether the media adequately tackled the issue of WMD.
Peter Golding (O’Sullivan & Jewkes, 1997) also identifies missing dimensions in news reporting – power and social process. The absence of social process in news is particularly relevant to the reporting of WMD because the history of the allies relationship with Iraq was not reported after Saddam Hussein became an enemy.
“News is about the present, or the immediate past. It is an account of today’s events…
…This fragmentation of social process, evacuating history, has been described as ‘a kind of consecration to collective amnesia’. In a real sense reason disappears as actors flit across the journalistic stage, perform and hurriedly disappear.”
p.256 (Golding, in O’Sullivan & Jewkes, 1997)Golding also identifies three ways that power is absent from news reporting. Geographically – news is a reflection of the distribution of reporters rather than the distribution of power. Simplification – the further away the country, the more likely the events are to be attributed to a single person – Saddam Hussein in the case of Iraq.
“News is about the actions of individuals, not corporate entities, thus individual authority rather than the exertion of entrenched power is seen to be the mover of events.”
p.256 (Golding, in O’Sullivan & Jewkes, 1997)The third absent aspect of power is the dislocation of power and politics:
“Politics is seen in the public display of formality, gesture and speech by major political actors. It is defined by reference to state and central institutions of political negotiation. Thus power is reduces to areas of negotiable compromise, and politics to a recurrent series of decisions, debates and personalities. It is removed from the institutions of production; thus news bears witness to the institutional separation of economics and politics, a precondition for the evacuation of power from its account of the worlds.”
p.256 (Golding, in O’Sullivan & Jewkes, 1997)News Values and Bias
The idea that there is a deliberate attempt by the media to suppress dissenting voices and to give extra credibility to those in power is challenged by Jerry Palmer (Briggs & Cobley, 2002). Palmer argues that news values are the result of industry working practices and that any bias results from the evolved structure of the media. He also quotes Galtung and Ruge (1970) who outlined a series of news values that coincide with the structure and operations of a news organisation. The news values are:1. Frequency – the event must be complete within the publication cycle of the news organisation reporting it.
2. Threshold – the even must pass a certain size threshold to qualify for sufficient importance to be newsworthy.
3. Clarity – it must be relatively clear what has actually happened.
4. Cultural Proximity – it must be meaningful to the audience of the news organisation in question.
5. Consonance – the event must be in accordance with the framework of understanding which typifies the culture of the potential audience.
6. Unexpectedness – within the framework of meaningfulness under cultural proximity and consonance, the event must be unexpected or rare.
7. Continuity – if an event has already been in the news, there is a good chance it will stay there.
8. Composition – coverage of events is partially dictated by the internal structure of newsgathering organisations.
9. Actions of the elite – events involving elite people or organisations are more likely to be covered than those of unimportant people.
10. Personification – events that can be seen in terms of individual people rather than abstractions.
11. Negativity – bad events are more newsworthy than good ones.
p.428 (Palmer, in Briggs & Cobley, 2002)These news values are mainly dictated by the timescales of news and the need for easily verifiable sources than deliberate attempts to disseminate propaganda. Golding (O’Sullivan & Jewkes, 1997) reinforces this view. He says:
“The bias of an individual reporter dealing with a single event may be reduced or even eliminated by, for example, the deliberate application of self-discipline and professional standards of reportorial fairness and accuracy, or by the use of several reporters of known and differing views. This form of bias must be distinguished from bias inherent in the practice of journalism per se. The former is conscious or at least detectable in individual reporters, the latter is accumulative and results from news collection and production as a total process. In other words we should distinguish bias as the deliberate aim of journalism, which is rare, from bias as the inevitable but unintended consequence of organisation.”
p.256 (Golding, in O’Sullivan & Jewkes, 1997)Partisan Press
Another type of bias present in the British press however is deliberate political bias. The partisan nature of the national newspapers has been well documented by McNair (1994), Williams (1998) and Budge (1998), among others. The Sun, although a right-wing newspaper, openly supported New Labour and lent its support to the government on a number of occasions since it came to power.As outlined by Curran and Seaton (1992), The Sun had previously been a supporter of Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government. The paradox is that the Daily Mirror, a traditionally working class and left-wing newspaper is more critical of the current Labour government than its right-wing rival, supporting instead the old Labour values.
Tunstall (1996) says that newspapers now define political crises and have the capacity to cause problems for Prime Ministers. It is for this reason that both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair took the trouble to court the support of Rupert Murdoch prior to the general elections of 1979 and 1997 but the political motivations of the press have undoubtedly been a factor in the way that the issue of WMD has been reported.
Method
I will be looking at the way the Sun and the Daily Mirror reported the issue of weapons of mass destruction before, during and after the Iraq war. To do this I will analyse selected texts from both newspapers taken at key points throughout the crisis and conflict.Up until the Spring of 2002, Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden dominated the headlines. The Sun maintained its running theme of the ‘War on Terror’ with headings at the top of every page related to Afghanistan or Camp X-Ray and heavily criticised its ‘wobbly rivals’ – namely the Daily Mirror, which claimed that the US government was torturing prisoners at Camp X-ray.
The Mirror also headed its related pages with a uniform ‘War on Terror’ banner, although its reporting was far broader and more likely to include critical articles about the way the war on terror was being conducted.
My analysis will begin from January 31, 2002 when George W. Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech was first reported in the British press. This was the point when it became clear that attention was shifting away from the conflict in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden to other ‘rogue’ states. I will focus on key moments in the conflict.
The study will also encompass the official period of the war itself – from March 20 until May 2, 2003, up until the final Iraq Survey Group report on October 6, 2004, which declared that there were no WMD in Iraq.
I will also look at other dates when the newspapers picked up on less obvious stories such as a story about Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector who said that Iraq was not a threat. I particularly want to look at the coverage given to Scott Ritter as Edwards and Cromwell (Miller, 2004) said that he was not given any coverage at all by the BBC or ITN and he received relatively only a dozen mentions in the Guardian during the first six months of 2003 when the war actually took place.
On March 13, 2002, the Daily Mirror carried a story on page seven about Scott Ritter. The headline read: “Scott Ritter – Blinkered Bush has got it all wrong with his flawed fury against Saddam Hussein, says the former UN weapons inspector on Iraq.” I will compare other coverage given to this individual by The Sun and the Daily Mirror between 31 January, 2002, and 31 October, 2004.
Using all of the selected texts I will look at the language used by the newspapers, the bias in their reporting and differing interpretations of the same stories. I will take note of the people they have quoted, what kind of status they have and the level of exposure they were given. I will identify the specific editorial positions of both newspapers at each stage of the crisis and how this was reflected in the type of stories published and the treatment they were given.
In my textual analysis I will look at the angle of the selected stories as well as the rhetoric and language used by journalists, such as derogatory words, slang and soundbites. I will analyse the emotive nature in which the news was presented such as the gung-ho patriotism usually associated with the British tabloids. I will look at how these elements go together to create value-loaded and biased representations of the events surrounding the Iraq war and the issue of weapons of mass destruction.
In addition to analysing the written content of the newspapers, I will also look at the position of the articles, the level of prominence they were given and the layout and the type of images used.
Tumber & Palmer’s study (2004) revealed the way that the same event could be recounted in different ways to suit the political or editorial stance of different publications. My study will highlight the differences in the treatment of stories or the failure to include them altogether.
Much has been written about the standards of journalism in the British press with regard to inaccurate and libellous stories and invasions of privacy, however, little has been written about the failure to report or give adequate coverage to certain stories, especially in relation to the Iraq conflict. With the battle for public opinion so important, the need for full and accurate information about the intricacies of the conflict was vital to public understanding.
My study will take into account the level of coverage given to dissenting, opposition and non-government voices, for instance Miller & Cromwell (Miller, 2004) point out that weapons inspectors were frequently sidelined by the press despite the fact that they had important first-hand information regarding the case for war.
I shall also be looking at the change of stance by the Daily Mirror from anti-war to supporting the troops after the start of the conflict and the possible reasons for this shift in policy. To supplement this information I will be looking at the circulation figures of both papers to see if there was any correlation between newspaper sales, the key points in the conflict and the change of editorial stance.As Des Freedman points out (Biressi & Nunn, 2004), the Mirror’s circulation dipped in the period immediately before the war as the anti-war movement lost momentum. I will investigate these findings and look at the amount of coverage each paper gave to the issue of weapons of mass destruction.
I will also look at the opinion of individual journalists over the editorial stance of the two publications, and in the case of the Mirror, the change in editorial policy to find out why a particular editorial stance was followed and whether the journalists working for the publication agreed with that policy.
To do this I will look at interviews with Piers Morgan and Rupert Murdoch and articles by Roy Greenslade.
One of the drawbacks with using textual analysis as my method of research is that it is qualitative rather than quantitative and the sample does not take into account every article that was written about the subject of WMD. The sample chosen represents newspaper reports of what have later been recognised as significant events in the Iraq crisis. I have tried to balance this by using statistics from the Lexis Nexis database such as counting the number of occurrences of articles containing the phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that were published during the sample period.
Another drawback to textual analysis is that it relies on the interpretation of an individual. I have tried to balance my own interpretation of the articles chosen with the comments of people involved such as Piers Morgan, the editor of the Daily Mirror at the time of the war.
Research findings
My findings are presented in two sections. Part one details the findings of the textual analysis described in the previous chapter. Part two draws upon secondary sources to contextualise the findings in part one by looking at interviews with Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror; Robert Maxwell, proprietor of News International, which owns The Sun; and media pundit, Roy Greenslade, who writes for The Guardian newspaper.Part One: Textual Analysis
Case One: George Bush delivers ‘Axis of Evil’ speech
I will begin my study with George Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech. The speech was one of the earliest indications that the US might lead a war against Iraq after Bush alleged that rogue nations, including Iraq, were stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. The speech was reported in the British press on Thursday, January 31, 2002.[The Daily Mirror reported Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech on page two (appendix 1), giving it around a third of the page and highlighting it with a black frame. Andy Lines, the paper’s US editor in New York and author of the story, stated in the opening line of the article:
“George W. Bush faced a barrage of criticism from around the world last night after his aggressive State of the Union address.”
In contrast, the Sun afforded the story just three sentences in an inch-wide nib column on page six (appendix 2). The Sun failed to mention that Bush was criticised or that anybody disagreed with what he said. The newspaper story takes the angle of westerners in danger from terrorists and rogue nations. The first line read:
“THOUSANDS of al-Qa’ida fighters threaten the world like “ticking time bombs set to go off without warning”, George Bush said yesterday.”
The Mirror’s angle was clearly anti-Bush. The paper quoted a number of world leaders from nations that Bush criticised in his address. Quotes were included from Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami; Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi; Chair of the Russian Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Dmitry Rogozin; Iraqi vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan; and Phillipines secretary, Hernando Perez. All the quotes other than those taken from the Bush speech were anti-Bush. Significantly the Mirror did not interview or quote anybody who supported Bush’s point of view, even though the UK, Spanish and Portuguese governments went on to support the war in Iraq. The reason for the failure to include supporting quotes could have been for two reasons.
The Sun, despite offering political support to the ruling party, has traditionally maintained its steady diet of entertainment and trivia so it is not necessarily surprising that a story that may alarm its readers would be bumped off the prominent areas of the newspaper and given less coverage.
The Daily Mirror did pick up on the sentiment of George Bush’s speech and quoted him accusing North Korea, Iran and Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction. Neither newspaper investigated the validity of any of the statements made. Readers were only left to decide who they believed because the newspapers gave no background to the issue nor did they interview any experts.
Case two: Blair presents weapons dossier to the Commons
The next case I will look at is that of the weapons dossier. On September 24, 2002, the Prime Minister delivered a speech in the House of Commons based on the weapons dossier which detailed the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, including the 45-minute claim. Although the information contained in the dossier was later questioned and partially disproved, the following day The Sun and the Daily Mirror reported on the dossier as a document of fact. But despite reporting on the same document, their interpretations of the information it contained were vastly different.Both newspapers gave the story the highest prominence, making it their front page story, although The Sun’s headline does share the front page with a panel of the Spice Girls reunion story on page 24 and 25 (appendix 3).
The angle of both newspapers was clear. The Sun’s headline:
“HE’S GOT ‘EM.. LET’S GET HIM”
It also showed small photos of both Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein. The article by Trevor Kavanagh, the paper’s political editor, stated that Blair ‘won an overwhelming vote of confidence’ and ‘crushed a labour revolt’.
The Daily Mirror’s front page bore the word ‘NO’ in giant letters (appendix 4). The full headline read:
“WE ASKED BLAIR TO PROVE THE CASE FOR AN ATTACK ON IRAQ.. DID HE SUCCEED?
NO
PRIME MINISTER”The Mirror dedicated twelve pages to the dossier, while the Sun used five. Both publications focused on the elements of the dossier that reinforced their stance.
On page four of The Sun (appendix 5 & 6) the headline read:
“BRITS 45mins FROM DOOM”
The headline actually referred to the British servicemen and tourists in Cyprus who were said to be within Iraq’s missile range. Journalist, George Pascoe-Watson, the Sun’s deputy political editor, also warned that Saddam ‘could be just 12 months away from having nuclear weapons’.
The emotive language used in the headline was designed to dramatise the events and by referring to the “Brits” in Cyprus, the article related directly to readers by using cultural proximity. The word “doom” also created drama and would have drawn readers in.
The Daily Mirror focused on the fact that Iraq had no nuclear weapons at that time and on page six and seven (appendix 7 & 8) on September 25, the newspaper carried a double page spread bearing the headline:
“HE CAN’T NUKE US”
Dotted across the page were short opinion pieces and quotes from various experts, each was just three or four sentences long. The experts included John Nichol, author and ex-Iraqi PoW; Terry Waite, former Beirut hostage; Tariq Ali, writer and broadcaster; Glenys Kinnock, Labour Euro MP; Sir Tim Garden, ex-defence staff chief; and Bruce Kent, vice-president of CND. All of the sources used by the Daily Mirror were publicly anti-war so there was no attempt to balance opposing views. The double page spread also included other expert opinion including Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, while the main article in the centre was relatively small. More space was given to ‘expert’ voices than the journalists themselves. Unsurprisingly, however, all the opinions were anti-war, although Scott Ritter conceded:
“Iraq has thousands of nuclear scientists still organised in the same manner as when Iraq had a nuclear weapons programme.
Those scientists are today involved in legitimate tasks. These allow them to work in fields similar to those where they were carrying out a nuclear programme.
There is concern, then, that the Iraqis might re-establish a nuclear weapons programme. But this must be tempered with reality.”The inclusion of Scott Ritter’s quote indicated a less gung-ho type of bias and might suggest to readers that there was some kind of balance in the newspaper’s reporting. However, Ritter was a well known critic of military action against Iraq and the thrust of the article remained clearly anti-war.
A search on the Lexis Nexis database shows that Scott Ritter was mentioned in a total of 21 articles between January 31, 2002, and November 7, 2004. By comparison, The Sun newspaper mentioned the former weapons expert in just three articles during that time – one of which, on January 23, 2003, focused on claims that he was a paedophile.
Ritter’s position as the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq gave him a level of credence that no other source could achieve, so as a critic of the war, he was an ideal source for the Daily Mirror.
Case three: Hans Blix announces findings and asks for more time
The next textual analysis is of the newspaper reports after Iraq weapons inspectors announced their findings. In January 2003 Hans Blix asked the UN and the coalition for more time to complete inspections in Iraq as the UN had so far found no WMD. On January 10, 2003, the Daily Mirror seized on the news and brandished a front page headline:“DIDDLY SQUAT – UN inspectors find NOTHING in Iraq”
The front page (appendix 9) was also shared by a full length image of actress, Kate Winslet.
Pages four and five were also taken up with the story (appendix 10 & 11), once again including quotes and articles written by people other than Daily Mirror journalists.
Meanwhile The Sun, by then a vehement supporter of the war, played down the news – printing the story on page two (appendix 12) and, as usual, taking a different angle on the same announcement. The headline of the page two lead by Nic Cecil reads:
“BLIX: SADDAM’S STILL UP TO HIS TRICKS ON ARMS – Iraqi tyrant branded liar by UN inspector”
The Sun still quoted Blix but focused on the negative elements of his findings – the missing VX nerve gas and missile engines. Prime Minister Blair was also quoted as saying the scientists should be allowed more time to complete their inspections.
The use of language evoked negative feelings towards Saddam Hussein – “tyrant branded liar” and in the opening paragraph says he “was living on borrowed time after UN arms inspectors blasted him for lying”.
Both newspapers quoted Blix as saying there was “no smoking gun” in Iraq but both used the quote in different contexts:
“UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix is to ask for another six months to investigate if Iraq has weapons of mass destruction after finding no evidence of a “smoking gun””.
Daily Mirror, p4, January 10, 2003Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix told the Security Council Saddam’s 12,000-page weapons declaration was full of holes.
He said: “We have been there for some two months and have been covering the country in ever-wider sweeps.
“We haven’t even found any smoking guns.”
But he added: “The declaration failed to answer a great many questions.”
The Sun, p.2, January 10, 2003Case four: Million march in London
Coverage of the forthcoming anti-war march on February 15, 2003 by the Daily Mirror was extensive and will form the fourth case study in my research. The newspaper devoted eight pages to the issue and the anti-war sentiment that was growing in Britain. The front page (appendix 13) depicted a starving, emaciated child and the words:“FOR HIS SAKE.. MARCH”
The caption for the image read:
“SUFFERING: This starving Iraqi child faced death in 1998 – a new war could kill a million children.”
The device of using children to convey a message is a common one. As the war progressed, the story of Ali Abbas, an Iraqi child who lost both his arms (and fifteen relatives) in a coalition rocket attack captured the nation as it was played out in the media.
The image used by the Daily Mirror is that of a child taken in 1998, said to be starving as a result of sanctions, but, the paper argued, ‘a new war could kill a million children’.
By using the child to convey the message to encourage people to join the anti-war march, the Daily Mirror pushed an emotional message, which was to forget the reasons for war and think of the children.
The Sun’s front page (appendix 14) was shared between ‘CORRIE ST SENSATION’, an image from the TV soap, and ‘UNITED WE STAND’, the lead story by George Pascoe-Watson, which begins:
“Britain and US defy UN wobblers on Iraq
Britain and America last night stood together and warned UN wobblers to back war on Iraq – or let tyrants take over the world.
Jack Straw and Colin Powell spoke with one voice after UN inspectors confirmed Saddam Hussein is STILL hiding weapons of mass destruction.”The newspaper decided to go with a completely different agenda, ignoring the impending march and focusing instead on the case for war.
The front page image caption of the two leaders read:
“Together.. Blair and Bush, determined to crush evil”
The front page also carries two small blocks which advertised the Big Cup Clash in Sun Sport and a free Daredevil watch on page 20, indicating that The Sun was reluctant to give too many column inches to the serious issue of impending war in case it alienated its regular peacetime readers who bought the newspaper for entertainment and sport.
The disparity in the thrust of the coverage continued inside both newspapers as The Sun dedicated pages four and five to its ‘UN wobblers’ story (appendix 15 & 16) while the Daily Mirror reported the march on pages two to seven (appendix 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22).
The language used in The Sun article is designed to create drama. The caption describing Bush and Blair ‘determined to crush evil’ and that the UN might let ‘tyrants take over the world’ painted a picture of the two leaders as courageous superheroes who were going to save us all.
On page five (appendix 16) The Sun listed the 15 Security Council nations and reported its version of what they said in response to the resolution. But rather than just give the facts, The Sun also gave each response a rating out of ten with America and Britain scoring highest with ten out of ten, while France, Germany and Syria scored zero. This type of bite-size summary is typical of tabloid newspapers and is popular with some readers who like to get the facts without looking into the details.
On page two of the Daily Mirror (appendix 17), despite peddling an anti-war message, the newspaper draws on the patriotic emotions of its readers by likening the march to the VE-day peace demonstration. The headline read:
“A MILLION MARCHING – London peace demo biggest since VE-Day”
Each of the pages carried a banner reading:
“THE WORLD AGAINST THE WAR: FEB 15, 2003”
Both devices evoked a sense of unity and of patriotism. The Sun also tried to capture a united patriotic mood with its headline, “United We Stand”.
Unlike The Sun, which kept coverage to a minimum to make way for its celebrity news, the Daily Mirror exploited its readers’ interest in celebrities by getting famous people to comment on the war. The newspaper used popular figures in entertainment to try and mould popular opinion. Pages four and five (appendix 19 & 20) of the Daily Mirror were devoted to celebrities saying why the war was wrong. This was a slight shift from previous opinion pieces such as the double page published on September 25, 2002 (appendix 7 & 8), which used quotes from weapons experts, Middle East experts and politicians. Instead of using previous anti-war sources such as Terry Waite, Tariq Ali and Glenys Kinnock, there were appeals for peace from entertainers like Suggs, George Clooney and Jonathan Ross.
One reason that The Sun may not have taken the route of interviewing celebrities about their views may be that, apart from politicians and business people, there we few famous people who were publicly supportive of the war.
Case five: Blair’s eve of war speech and the subsequent Commons vote
The next part of this study will look at how the Daily Mirror and The Sun reported Tony Blair’s previous speech to the Commons on the eve of the war Iraq. The disparity between the coverage in the two newspapers on Wednesday, March 19, 2003, continued to be apparent as war began. The Sun was quick to seize on Blair’s Commons victory and its front page was unusually entirely occupied by the story (appendix 23), it shows a picture of Blair in the Commons and bears the headline:“BLAIR FORCE WON – Fiery speech routs rebels by 179 votes”
An inset in the top corner announced: “War in hours” and there was no sign of the usual celebrity and entertainment promotions that usually occupied the front page.
The Mirror’s angle focused on the large number of Labour MPs who voted against the war and the resignations that followed.
Ten days previously, International Development Secretary, Clare Short had vowed to resign from the cabinet if Britain went to war without the backing of the UN. Prior to the Blair speech she announced that she would no longer resign.
While the Daily Mirror reported Blair’s speech on its front page, the story occupied a small box at the top of the front page, while the story of Clare Short’s u-turn was the main focus (appendix 24). The story of the Labour revolt was entitled simply – “REVOLT”, while the main picture showing Clare Short bore the headline – “REVOLTING”.
Meanwhile, although Clare Short’s u-turn was seen as a victory for the pro-war camp, the story only occupied a small box at the bottom of page four (appendix 25) of The Sun, entitled:
“Mockery for Short U-turn”
The individual themes continued throughout both newspapers. The Daily Mirror focused on Clare Short (appendix 26), the resignations and the Labour rebels, while The Sun emphasised the Commons victory and Blair’s successful speech.
Case six: Gilligan’s report on the ‘Today’ programme
A significant event in the unfolding saga of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was the radio report by Andrew Gilligan that the government has ordered the weapons dossier to be embellished. On Thursday, May 29, 2003, Andrew Gilligan’s ‘Today’ report was broadcast on Radio Four claiming that Downing Street had ordered the weapons dossier to be ‘sexed up’.The following morning, May 30, 2003, the story had made the front page of the Daily Mirror (appendix 27) yet only received a tiny five sentence single column at the bottom of page five of The Sun. The front page instead focused instead on the British soldier who was arrested after torture photographs were seized (appendix 28).
The Mirror, on the other hand, made the most of the story, although three quarters of the front page was taken up by a photo of Prince William and a headline promoting a special feature on the prince inside the newspaper.
Despite only occupying a quarter of the page, the Daily Mirror’s headline was big and to the point. It read:
“SEX IT UP! – No 10’s order on Saddam dossier”
The article was the first time that the newspapers had questioned the truth of the dossier itself, although the Daily Mirror had previously seized on the ambiguity of the dossier, using the information it contained to promote its own point of view. The Sun too used its own interpretation to present its argument but neither had previously examined its integrity or investigated its claims.
The article by Bob Roberts and Gary Jones on pages eight and 9 used loaded terms such as spin doctors, propaganda and lies (appendix 29 & 30), while the Sun’s five-sentence nib backed the Prime Minister in his rebuttal of the claims (appendix 32). Its headline reads:
“PM fury at BBC ‘slur’”
In the Daily Mirror, the dossier story continues in a double page spread on pages eight and 9. The headline reads:
“LIES LIES LIES LIES”
While at the top of page 9, the story is tempered with another article entitled:
“THE TRUTH”
Which describes Tony Blair’s visit to troops when he tells them that:
“people back home are incredibly proud of what you have done. You made this whole country hold their head up high.”
Despite vehemently opposing the war and reasons on which it was based, the Daily Mirror seemed to be trying to contain its criticism of the Prime Minister and the Labour Government, of which it had always been a supporter, by printing negative stories next to positive ones.
The Sun too reports Tony Blair’s visit to troops, the tiny article about the dossier is juxtaposed with a bigger article about Blair’s visit and the majority of page five was occupied with a photo of Blair holding a young Iraqi boy who was kissing him on the cheek (appendix 31 & 32). The balance here was not visible. The headline read:
“WE’RE SO PROUD – Blair’s Iraq salute tour hero forces”
The Sun’s attempts to bury the bad news is significant, especially as the Gilligan report became such a major issue, which led to the Commons select committee questioning Dr David Kelly, who later committed suicide, the Hutton Report and the subsequent Butler Inquiry.
Case seven: Hans Blix interview with BBC
Just a week later weapons inspector Hans Blix told the BBC that his teams had never found any evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction and on Saturday, June 7, 2003, the Daily Mirror published the story on page two by Paul Gilfeather, the newspaper’s Whitehall editor (appendix 33). The headline read:“BLIX: SADDAM HAD NO WMD – Watchdog slams US-Brit intelligence info”
Underneath the Blix story was another piece, by the same journalist, which began:
“GEORGE Bush was told by Pentagon chiefs there was NO evidence Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction, it emerged yesterday.”
The Sun’s page two lead was a story about Ali Abbas (appendix 34) entitled:
“HAPPY ALI – Hope of bomb boy who lost arms”
The Blix and Pentagon stories that appeared in the Daily Mirror also appeared in The Sun, occupying three sentences on the right hand column of page two (appendix 34). The story simply read:
“Pentagon in WMD ‘denial’
US SPIES reported BEFORE Gulf War II that there was “no reliable information” that Iraq had chemical or biological weapons.
The Pentagon report – obtained by CNN – was made public yesterday as weapons inspector Hans Blix told the UN he was shaken by “poor” US and British intelligence on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
But Dr Blix told the Security Council that the regime may have hidden WMDs or destroyed them before the Allies Invaded.”There was no image to accompany the story and anyone who just glanced through the newspaper would have missed the story entirely.
The magnitude of both the Blix and Pentagon story and the Gilligan report may have been dictated by the fact that they were broken by other media suppliers. The Gilligan report and the Blix interview were from the BBC, while the Pentagon document was obtained by CNN. A story that has already been reported is, to some extent, old news so it could be a factor in why the papers didn’t give them more prominence.
Case eight: Dr David Kelly found dead
The death of Dr Kelly sparked an enquiry which many believed would prompt the resignation of the Prime Minister. When Dr Kelly was found dead, both publications made the story their front page news, but the headlines implied blame was laid at different doors. The following day, Saturday, July 19, 2003, the Daily Mirror headline (appendix 35) claimed that Kelly had been:“SPUN TO DEATH – Iraq expert driven to tragic ‘suicide’”
The newspaper had previously referred to spin doctors and had reported on the ‘transformation’ of the weapons dossier to make it ‘sexier’. The headline, ‘spun to death’, implied that the government spin doctors were to blame for the death, and the article went on to name Alastair Campbell and Geoff Hoon as individuals involved in the Kelly affair. Additionally, the single quotations around the word ‘suicide’ suggested that the death of Dr Kelly may not have been a suicide, especially as the term was only used once in the body of the article by Gary Jones and Steve McCormish, in the first line which read:
“TONY BLAIR’S government was in crisis last night after the apparent suicide of a scientist embroiled in the Iraq WMD controversy.”
By referring to Tony Blair’s government, the Daily Mirror avoided using the word ‘Labour’, as the newspaper has traditionally supported Labour. Also by using the name of an individual, the newspaper is attributing the actions to an individual, making the story easier for readers to relate to and understand. David Kelly is not mentioned by name until the second paragraph, however, in the subheading he is referred to as an ‘Iraq expert’.
The Sun on the other hand uses a less flattering term (appendix 36), calling Dr Kelly a ‘mole’. The front page headline read:
“DEATH OF THE MOLE – Weapons doc suicide”
The story, by chief reporter Jon Kay, focused on the nature of the death – the fact that it was ‘grisly’ and that Kelly had been found face-down (appendix 37 & 38). The angle taken by the Daily Mirror was to look at the background and why the situation had occurred. In total, the Mirror dedicated seven pages to the incident, speculating ‘whose heads will roll?’ and that Dr Kelly was ‘thrown to the wolves’ (appendix 39). The Sun report took up five pages but also included a report that Tory MP, Robert Jackson, blamed the BBC for Kelly’s death (appendix 38).
Case nine: Iraq Survey Group delivers assessment of Iraq’s WMD
The ongoing hunt for Iraq’s weapons continued to make the headlines and on October 2, 2003, the Iraq Survey Group delivered its final assessment, saying that it had found no WMD in Iraq. The subsequent interpretation of the report by the tabloid press on Friday, October 3, 2003, again differed between the two newspapers.The Sun headline on page eight (appendix 40) read:
“WMD: BLAIR WAS RIGHT”
While the Daily Mirror’s article on page two (appendix 42) was entitled:
“BLUFF – Hammer blow to case for war as US taskforce fails to find WMDs”
The angle of the Daily Mirror’s article, by Anthony Harwood and Nick Watkins was that the Iraq Survey Group believed that Saddam Hussein had been bluffing about owning weapons of mass destruction.
The Sun’s angle was that, terrifyingly, Saddam Hussein was secretly preparing for chemical, biological and nuclear war (appendix 40 & 41). Neither newspaper contradicted each other but a different conclusion could be drawn from each article.
Case ten: Hutton report is leaked
The next report of note came on January 27, 2003 when the findings of the Hutton Report into the death of Dr David Kelly were leaked to the press a day ahead of its official release. The following day, on January 28, both newspapers claimed a “world exclusive” (appendix 43 & 44) and bore the headlines:“HUTTON LEAKED”
Daily Mirror, p.1, January 28, 2004“HUTTON REPORT LEAKED”
The Sun, p.1, January 28, 2004For once the newspapers seemed to agree on the news agenda although the Daily Mirror angle focused on the scandal of the leak itself rather than the contents of the report.
The Sun article carried on from the front page to pages four and five where Trevor Kavanagh is credited with the ‘scoop’ (appendix 45 & 46). A small inset at the start of the article states:
“IT WAS the call every journalist in Westminster was waiting for and TREVOR KAVANAGH got it.
For days the big question at the Commons has been the verdict of Lord Hutton’s report on the death of Dr David Kelly.
And before MPs and Cabinet got the hear the conclusions of Lord Hutton, Trevor noted them all down from a trusted source – then set about writing the scoop of the year.”The Daily Mirror’s article, although published the same day and containing the same information, was presented with less fanfare – although the front page did say ‘world exclusive’ (appendix 43). The story continued on page two only (appendix 47), which could suggest that the news either arrived late for the first editions or was only published in the late edition of the newspaper. The story may also even have been taken from the earlier edition of The Sun.
The Sun’s article seems as though it was not addition to the late edition newspaper because it covers three pages including the cover, as well as in depth comment in The Sun Says column and Commentary by Trevor Kavanagh, both on page eight (appendix 48).
Case eleven: Hutton Report released
When the report was officially released, the following day’s newspapers, on Thursday, January 29, 2004, reiterated the findings and the Daily Mirror appeared to come out in support for Mr Blair, although it still mentioned on its front page about the missing WMD – which was a running theme days with the daily inclusion of a WMD-ometer.The front page of the Daily Mirror showed three circular-framed pictures showing Hoon, Blair and Campbell (appendix 49). The double headline read:
“UNFOUNDED ..the charge they ‘sexed up’ dossier
UNFOUND ..the WMD they took us to war over”The device of using different endings to words to convey a message was also used on March 19, 2003, with ‘Revolt’ and ‘Revolting’ about the Labour revolt and Clare Short’s decision to stay (appendix 24).
Inside the Daily Mirror on page four a giant headline (appendix 50), taking up most of the page read:
“BACK FROM THE DEAD”
While a supplementary headline on the opposite page (appendix 51) accompanying a small image of Michael Howard as Dracula read:
“BACK TO THE DEAD (Fang you, and GOODNIGHT!)
The Daily Mirror slated Mr Howard for accusing the Prime Minister of being dishonest, even though the newspaper had previously reported the ‘sexed-up’ dossier as being the work of number 10 (appendix 29 & 30) and containing:
“LIES LIES LIES LIES”
But, as on May 30, 2003, the Daily Mirror tried to paint a positive picture of the Prime Minister, showing a large close up photograph of his smiling face, with the caption:
“TRIUMPH”
The Sun also focussed on the success of Blair and his demands for an apology from Michael Howard for calling him a liar (appendix 52), but the newspaper’s double page spread on pages eight and 9 (appendix 53 & 54) heaped praise on journalist Trevor Kavanagh. The headline read:
“SPOT-ON REPORT – World praise for our Trevor”
In the weeks that followed, the Daily Mirror and editor Piers Morgan were embroiled in controversy after the newspaper published photographs depicting British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners of war. The editor repeatedly defended the use of the photographs, saying they depicted real acts that were occurring in Iraqi jails. On May 14, 2004, after the photos were proved to be false, Piers Morgan was sacked by the Daily Mirror and the newspaper printed a public apology. (BBC News, 2004)
Case twelve: The Butler Report
The release of the Butler Report into the intelligence failures that led to war fuelled the ongoing WMD discussion. Despite Piers Morgan’s sacking, the newspaper continued to include its WMD-ometer every day and on July 15, 2004, the day after the Butler Report was released, the Daily Mirror published a very unflattering photograph of Mr Blair on the front page (appendix 55) accompanied by the headline:“OVER SEXED
Blair DID spin the case for war
Intelligence ‘seriously flawed’
But NOBODY should be blamed”The Sun, in contrast, didn’t carry the Butler Report story on its front page, instead, introducing it on page two (appendix 56). The headline read:
“I’LL TAKE THE RAP (But there’s no rap for Blair to take for sending troops to Iraq)”
On page eight and 9 (appendix 57 & 58), a double page article by Trevor Kavanagh and David Wooding is entitled:
“NOBODY
RESPOSIBLE…
NOBODY
TO BLAME…
NOBODY
TO RESIGN
(Thanks very much, says Mr Blair)”The repeated words ram home the message and the newspaper is vitriolic after being proved right that the Prime Minister would be admonished of all blame.
The Mirror’s article on pages four and five, on the other hand, focussed on the mistakes which led to war (appendix 59 & 60).
Case thirteen: Blair’s speech to the Labour Party conference
Blair’s final admittance that he was wrong about Iraq’s WMD made the headlines after months of speculation by the press about the issue and was the first time that the Daily Mirror and The Sun seemed to agree on how the story should be reported. At the Labour Party conference, Tony Blair admitted he was wrong about Iraq’s weapons but did not apologise for the war. The reports in the Daily Mirror and The Sun on Wednesday, September 29, 2004, varied slightly but received similar treatment. The headline on page seven (appendix 61) of the Daily Mirror read:“SORRY, I JUST CAN’T SAY SORRY – Blair drops Iraq apology”
While The Sun headline (appendix 62) on page six read:
“SORRY? I’M NOT SORRY WE GOT RID OF SADDAM”
For the first time throughout the Iraq crisis, both newspapers followed the same news agenda, giving Blair’s speech equal prominence, position and reporting the same angle. Both newspapers are supporters of the Labour Party and the fact that the speech was made at the Labour conference was most likely to have been a factor in the positive coverage.
The Daily Mirror’s front page focused on Blair’s pledge to fight and win a third term for Labour (appendix 63) apparently drawing a line under the Iraq affair, while The Sun’s cover (appendix 64) declared:
“I WAS RIGHT OVER IRAQ – But PM says: I got it wrong on WMD”
Case fourteen: Iraq Survey Group delivers final report
The Daily Mirror’s support for the government continued to be sporadic. When the Iraq Survey Group delivered its final report on Iraq’s weapons, the following day’s page two headline (appendix 65) on October 7, 2004, read:“IRAQ SURVEY GROUP: Saddam had no WMD
BLAIR & STRAW: That means we were right
WHAT PLANET ARE THEY ON?”The WMD counter had also been extended. Instead of reading ‘xxx days and still no WMD’, the counter read:
“36000000 pages of evidence collected
10000 videos
1400 inspectors
488 days of searching
000 WMD”The Sun, unsurprisingly, seized on another aspect of the report which said Saddam had plans to develop a WMD arsenal and its page two lead focussed on claims that anti-war campaigner George Galloway stood to make £5m from an oil-for-food programme (appendix 66). In both articles the Prime Minister was only mentioned once at the end of the WMD article.
The Daily Mirror’s stance
The stance of The Sun throughout the crisis and conflict was clear; however the Daily Mirror’s situation was slightly more complex. As a traditional Labour supporter, the newspaper was reluctant or unwilling to criticise the party itself. The Labour Party had traditionally been an anti-war party, a position which the Daily Mirror had always supported.Rather than criticise Labour, the Daily Mirror aimed its criticism at individuals within the Cabinet – mainly the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon. The newspaper was quick to praise individuals within the party who opposed the war, especially as the Prime Minister received more support for the invasion from the Conservative benches than from his own backbench Labour MPs.
Throughout history it has been an unwritten rule that during a conflict the nation must stand together. Any criticism is deemed as unpatriotic and unpopular with the general public whose relatives and friends in the forces are in the firing line. During the Suez crisis in 1956, Guardian editor Alistair Hetherington came under fire for opposing the invasion of Suez, while during the Falklands and Gulf conflicts, mud slinging by The Sun against its “treacherous” and “wobbly” rivals, most notably the Daily Mirror, has become a feature of modern-day conflicts.
After the war began, however, the Daily Mirror softened in its approach, moving its war articles from the front page to inside the newspaper. However, it continued to dedicate more column inches to the issue than The Sun. A search on the Lexis Nexis database reveals that during the period of this study – between January 2002 and October 2004, the number of articles mentioning weapons of mass destruction in the Daily Mirror amounted to more than double the amount published in The Sun. (Appendix 67)
The problem that the Daily Mirror faced in opposing the war was documented by the Guardian’s Roy Greenslade on March 17, 2003. Three days before the start of the war he wrote:
“The papers that want war will have no difficulty in offering full-hearted support to the troops as they march into Iraq and the pilots drop their smart bombs on Baghdad. Such is the overlap between news and comment on tabloids that there’s no question of confusion between what a paper thinks and the angles it adopts in its stories. It’s so easy to tell from a tabloid front page what its leader column will say. At times of war, this has been even more true and some might think the Daily Mirror, the only daily tabloid trenchantly opposed to the war, will face a crisis once the boys go in.”
(Guardian, 2003)Although the newspaper remained opposed to the conflict itself, after the war started it declared support for the troops who had been sent to fight. The difference between supporting the war and supporting those fighting the war was subtle and was a stance that could not easily be translated into a simple tabloid-style message.
According to Des Freedman (2004), the Daily Mirror’s reporting of the Iraq crisis stemmed the decline in sales during the early part of 2003 and after the start of the invasion on March 20, 2003, it was reluctant to be seen as undermining the British troops and denting their morale by printing criticism. In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph in April 2002, Piers Morgan said:
“I personally slightly misjudged the way that you would be attitudinal on the front page in the way that we were, once the war actually started… It’s entirely down to the natural sense in this country – particularly among the tabloid readership – that once a war starts, if we’re involved, we must unequivocally support our boys and girls.”
(Belfast Telegraph, 2003)According to Piers Morgan, the Daily Mirror lost between 1.5 and 2 per cent of its readers during the first week of the Iraq conflict (Belfast Telegraph, 2003). His response was to remove the issue of war from the front pages of the newspaper because a dip in sales equalled a dip in advertising revenues.
In the Belfast Telegraph interview, Morgan strongly criticised the Daily Mail for changing its anti-war stance to a pro-war stance at the start of the war but he admitted:
“If the Mirror had suddenly gone gung-ho like The Sun, we’d have even worse problems, because a large body of our readers completely agree with our stance on this. That would have been much more disastrous.”
Greenslade (2003) notes that although the Daily Mirror is not part of a multi-national company, its largest investor in the US applied pressure for the newspaper to change its editorial line, giving rise to the debate about whether we have a truly free press.
The Sun’s stance
Although The Sun’s editor Rebekah Wade, was unlikely to have received any direct interference from the newspaper’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, over her reporting of the Iraq war, Roy Greenslade (2003) notes that every one of Murdoch’s 175 newspapers around the globe came out in support of the war. Murdoch himself, when interviewed by his own Sydney Telegraph, said that Bush and Blair were acting with great courage and that the greatest thing to come out of a war with Iraq “would be $20 a barrel for oil”. He also told Fortune magazine in the US:“Once it is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else.”
(Quoted in Guardian, 2003)Murdoch clearly viewed the conflict as an economic war rather than about weapons of mass destruction, however, although The Sun supported the war, Murdoch’s opinion was not apparent. Instead the newspaper focused on the issue of WMD as the primary reason for a conflict.
Since the run-up to the 1997 General Election, when Blair courted the support of Murdoch and The Sun switched its allegiances to Labour, the newspaper has supported the Labour government, albeit in its traditional aggressive and vitriolic fashion.
Historically The Sun had always supported military action whenever it occurred, such as the Falklands war and the Gulf war, which followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. It has consistently taken a hard-line stance, branding its anti-war competitors as “wobblers” and “unpatriotic”.
The newspaper’s stance on the Iraq issue was easily predictable, given its relatively new-found support for Labour over the last eight years and its right-wing-orientated pro-war history since it was re-launched by Rupert Murdoch in 1969.
Murdoch’s vast business empire and his decision to take up US citizenship made him an unlikely candidate to oppose any US-led invasion of Iraq.
Conclusion
In conclusion, neither newspaper offered an unbiased or fair representation of events because they both drew on sources that would support their case for or against the war. Both omitted or buried stories that would prove them wrong. In the case