Complaints about the newspaper’s coverage of Iraq fall largely into two camps: One claims that editors put “negative” stories on Page 1 in order to reflect poorly on the Bush administration, and the other camp insists editors wipe Iraq stories off Page 1 in order to keep the public uninformed and to lessen criticism of the Bush administration.
Neither is true.
It doesn’t take a survey of public opinion polls to understand that the debate about the American presence in Iraq has become highly politicized, and the press criticism is certainly a reflection of that polarization. While many readers may be cheered by the front-page news of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, they may be angered by earlier stories reporting on the alleged killing of innocent Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha.
I thought we should examine some actual data about how many Iraq stories appear on the front page of this and other major American newspapers. What is immediately clear: a definite drop in the number of front-page articles as the war and occupation progressed during the last three years.
In the first five months of this year, Tribune editors placed Iraq on the front page on average every third or fourth day–there were 41 Iraq stories in 151 days. In the same period last year, there were 74 Iraq articles on Page 1. There were 138 stories in 2004.
How does that compare to other newspapers? My colleague in the Tribune research center, Alan Peters, checked the January-to-May numbers for a dozen other newspapers. He looked for news stories with “Iraq” in the headline and in the first paragraph and then checked that they were substantive articles. He found a wide variety of front-page coverage but a consistent drop in the number of articles year over year.
The Washington Post led all U.S. newspapers with 132 front-page articles on Iraq in the first five months of this year. The war is not only a national story for the Post, it is a local story with the White House, State Department and Pentagon in its back yard. Still, this year’s number was down from the 161 articles on the front page in the same period of 2005. The Post ran twice as many stories in early 2004 as it has in 2006.
At the other end of the spectrum of front-page coverage, USA Today, the nation’s largest circulation newspaper, had 21 Page 1 articles on Iraq in the first five months of this year, 22 the year before and 42 the year before that.
For those who want to keep track, here are other statistics. The New York Times 113 (2006), 143 (2005) and 216 (2004). The Los Angeles Times, 127, 155 and 238. Looking at a smaller paper, The Boston Globe’s count was 32, 65 and 143.
So what does that tell readers?
There are some obvious factors: The Abu Ghraib prison scandal was playing out in early 2004, and Iraqi elections were a major story at the beginning of 2005. Over the months, the violence against Americans ebbed and then Iraqis killing other Iraqis increased steadily as the insurgents gained strength and refocused their efforts.
The raw numbers also suggest a wide variety of news judgments. One editor may see significance in a political or diplomatic development while another sees the same event as just an incremental change not worth the front page.
The across-the-board decline in front-page coverage also suggests a certain amount of “Iraq fatigue” on the part of editors, who may think that readers feel the same.
An odd assortment of factors drive front-page stories. The local, national and international events of the day compete for the five, six or seven stories that will appear on Page 1.
The importance of Iraq’s first day of voting in a free election certainly makes it a front-page candidate. But smaller enterprise stories–say Tribune foreign correspondent Liz Sly reporting that many Iraqi men are officially changing their first names from Omar out of fear of being targets of sectarian killers–may or may not. (Hers did.)
While those who are suspicious of our motives claim that newspapers only report on the bad news, the killings, the fact is that there is an alarming sameness to the daily violence that gets very little attention. Also affecting coverage: After the rash of kidnappings, bombings and murders there are far fewer correspondents in Iraq now than there were two or three years ago. Newspapers and other media are greatly restricted in traveling around the country, even through the neighborhoods of Baghdad, though that has not stopped courageous reporters from taking the risk of meeting with Iraqis and traveling with the American military.
