Last week, Media Mouse reported on an effort by the antiwar group ACTIVATE to get the Grand Rapids Press to improve its coverage of the Iraq War. As part of this effort, ACTIVATE conducted a review of the Grand Rapids Press' coverage of the Iraq War for the week of February 19 to February 25. In findings that were consistent with earlier studies of the Grand Rapids Press' war coverage done by the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy (GRIID), ACTIVATE found that the Press relied primarily on "official sources" from the military and government and that the majority of the articles were reprinted from various wire services, including the Associated Press.
As a follow-up to that review, Media Mouse has conducted a similar one-week review of the Grand Rapids Press' Iraq War coverage for the week of February 26 to March 4. During that period, the Grand Rapids Press once again ran 22 stories covering the Iraq War. Of these 22 stories, the overwhelming majority (17) were articles written by the Associated Press. In these articles, a total of 37 sources were quoted. Of these sources, 13 were from the United States government or military, 12 were Iraqi, 11 were people living within the United States who are not part of the military, and 1 was an international source. At first glance, these numbers seem to reveal a more balanced list, particularly with regard to the number of Iraqi voices compared to the previous analysis (6 Iraqis were consulted and 13 US government and military sources were consulted). However, a detailed look at the number shows that the coverage is still skewed in favor of "official sources." The majority of the Iraqi voices quoted in the Press were from the Iraqi government or military (8), with only four sources reflecting a view from outside the Iraqi government and military. Combining the official Iraqi sources with the official United States sources shows that 21 of the 37 voices in the stories were from "official sources." The next most frequently quoted sources were friends or family of wounded soldiers in Iraq, with eight of those sources being quoted (out of 11 total non-government sources from the United States). Of all the sources consulted, only one perspective that was truly critical of the war was offered, with Democratic Congressperson Lynn Woolsey being quoted as a proponent of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. The other three "dissenting" sources--Democratic Senator Harry Reid, Democratic Representative James Moran, and a spokesperson for Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi--presented perspectives that either supported the ongoing occupation or were critical of various legislative proposals that aim to limit the scope of the war.
In addition to looking at the coverage of the war, we also decided to review the contents of the Grand Rapids Press' opinion pages for the two-week period of February 19 to March 4. During that period, the Grand Rapids Press ran a total of 80 letters to the editor along with 38 syndicated columns and guest essays. Of the 80 letters to the editor, 9 contained commentary on the Iraq War, with 6 featuring antiwar perspectives and 3 featuring pro-war perspectives. The columns and guest essays, the majority of which are syndicated columns authored by various nationally known columnists, were heavily weighted towards those supporting the war. There were six columns that discussed the Iraq War, with five of them promoting a pro-war view or a view that supported the ongoing occupation of Iraq. Of the columns, only "The War Cost Factor" by Robert J. Samuelson presented a perspective at all critical of the war. The other columns, by longtime war supporters such as Thomas Friedman, Michelle Malkin, and Cal Thomas, advanced opinions that not only supported the war, but also attempted to discredit it. Michelle Malkin's column printed on March 1 was titled "Defending troops, guarding DC on March 17" promoted the idea that antiwar protestors were going to "attack" Washington DC during antiwar demonstrations that will be held outside of the Pentagon on March 17 while also asserting that protestors might deface monuments dedicated to veterans. A similar view of antiwar protestors as being "against the troops" was featured in Cal Thomas' "From Iraq, a letter of Grand Rapids' Sgt. Dobson" which quoted a soldier from Grand Rapids to argue that soldiers see the debate over the war as damaging to the war effort. Thomas Friedman asserted that Muslims have been silent on terrorism in his March 4 column and advanced an anti-Muslim view.
It is difficult to evaluate the contents of the editorial page in any way other than through quantitative analysis. By the very nature of the medium, editorial pages encourage opinions and intuition over facts and analysis with most "letters to the editor" featuring little by way of persuasive arguments. Similarly, the syndicated columnists are little more than paid ideologues, generally rehashing a consistent ideological perspective from week to week regardless of the issue. However, what is clear is that the editorial page is not a substitute for well-researched journalism that consults a variety of sources and perspectives. Even if the opinion section of the Grand Rapids Press printed editorials that were consistently critical of the war, it does not make up for their reporting of the Iraq War. By relying on these sources, the Press essentially acts as a megaphone for the United States government and military and echoes official positions while minimizing the voices of the Iraqis who are the most affected by the war as well as the voices of critics of the war.
