Fagetti 1 James Fagetti Mrs. Babcock ENGL 137H, Section 024 5 November 2013 Wheres the Coverage?

In June of 2011, President Obama announced that by 2014 the United States role in defending Afghanistan would be over. He stated in his initial speech on the rollback of American forces, By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security (Obama par. 4). It is now the year 2013, and as the conflict entered its 12th year, although more American military personnel are being brought back home every day, the conflict rages on with soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors all still in harms way overseas in Afghanistan. However, the continued involvement of United States armed forces in Afghanistan is mostly hidden in American press coverage. Due to the changing of press objectives, the United States media focus on military engagements has been downscaled since the Vietnam conflict. The drawdown on the situation in Afghanistan has occurred partially because public interest is often mismatched with press coverage and public opinion has been crippled by lack of coverage of the Afghanistan conflict. In the future, this nation will be greatly affected by conflicts that could have possibly been brought to an end sooner by better coverage of the conflict. The Vietnam conflict is seen as the first great war that the United States was involved in to draw in the average American family due to the widespread use of the television. The press had daily coverage of the war and this greatly impacted the views of Americans toward the war.

Fagetti 2 With great reporters such as Walter Cronkite who gave frank, and up front appraisals of the situation of the conflict, many Americans were able to see that there was no victory in sight for the operations in Vietnam. Cronkite said on CBS on Feb. 27, 1968: "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. ... To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion." (Neuharth par. 5). Along with a frank report on the situation in the conflict the news reports, always at the end of the news report for the night a black screen with absolute silence would roll a list of the K.I.A.s (Killed in Action) from the day of the report. This was always a reminder that freedom was, is, and never will be without a cost. The result of this effective detailed reporting resulted in a large anti-war movement that was greatly influential in ending the United States influence in Southeast Asia. The results of this reporting contrast the style of reporting that exists with todays conflicts. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the United States is swift in responding the attack by targeting the organization of the planners of the deadly assault on American soil. It is identified that Al Qaeda and its leader, Usama Bin Laden are responsible and the United States swiftly responds by invading the country that shelters the terrorist group. There was a large media presence at the beginning of the war from 2001-2002, however, besides the opening years of the war, the American press has greatly under-reported this war (Hanrahan par. 2). As the war progressed, news coverage did not follow. Once the United States began operations in Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom, even more media coverage was taken away from the Afghani conflict. John Sifton, a former senior researcher for Human Rights Watch stated, Iraq steals a lot of the oxygen, and you really have to try to get people to care about [Afghanistan]. It's not easy (Folkenflik par. 6). Even in the year 2010, the year before the draw down was announced by

Fagetti 3 President Obama (which also was the most deadly of the conflict), media coverage was sorely lacking and many were ill informed on the situation overseas in the Afghan theater of conflict. The media [had] devoted only four percent of its coverage [in the year 2010] to the war, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. The New York Times [reported] that low public interest in the war, along with the very complicated nature of the conflict, likely explains the dearth of coverage (Zornick par. 2). Even as recently as the 2012 presidential election, [the conflict in Afghanistan was] rarely mentioned on the campaign trail by either of the presidential candidates (Eromeyer par. 3). This proves that a lack of coverage is a vicious cycle of lackluster reporting in the field on the conflict, public disinterest in the conflict due to poor coverage of the situation, and then political silence on the issue when the issue itself is a pressing national security and foreign policy topic. Although it is mentioned earlier that the Operation Iraqi Freedom (the Iraqi War) did steal practically all of the United States military involvement in Afghanistan. After the initial months of the invasion of Iraq, the percentage of press coverage of the Operation Iraqi Freedom also plummeted. According to the American Journalism Review, During the first 10 weeks of 2007, Iraq accounted for 23 percent of TV news. In 2008, it plummeted to 3 percent during that period. On cable networks it fell from 24 percent to 1 percent, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Another statistic from the Project for Excellence in Journalism by the Pew Research Center cites, The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that the number of news stories about Iraq had fallen off dramatically since last year. The study shows the percentage of news stories devoted to the war dropped from an average of 15 percent of all stories last July to just 3 percent in February of [2008] (Ricchiardi par. 7). As with the Afghanistan conflict, the Iraq Wars coverage reduced within the mainstream due to the

Fagetti 4 economic crisis that befell the United States in the years after the conflict had started, and also in 2008 the case was the media was more interested in covering the Presidential election and its hopefuls. Another piece of information cited by the American Journalism Review, By March 2008, a striking reversal had taken place. Only 28 percent of Americans knew that 4,000 military personnel had been killed in the conflict, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Eight months earlier, 54 percent could cite the correct casualty rate (Ricchiardi par. 8) This indicates that without the proper media coverage for a conflict that the United States is involved in, the medias ability to follow and make an impact on the countrys direction with the war is severely impaired. Also, another negative effect that occurs due to a lack of coverage is a seeming lack of interest from the people because they are not receiving the information from the media that is necessary to give them interest to take an active role in The lack of media coverage of the Iraq War is telling of how the lack of media coverage would affect the countrys decisions in regards to its engagements in Afghanistan. With Iraq, the story is very similar to the case in Afghanistan. The press coverage was very high at the beginning of the war starting with the invasion of Iraq. But, as the war progressed, media coverage waned as other national events caught the medias attention. The same happened with the Afghanistan conflict. Finally, the Iraq War shows the negative consequences that occur due to a lack of media coverage that would later be recreated with the later years of the Afghanistan War. Also, another negative effect that occurs due to a lack of coverage is a seeming lack of interest from the people because they are not receiving the information from the media that is necessary to give them interest to take an active role in deciding whether they are for or against the war. In 2008, at the time of the Presidential election, CNN reported, In its most recent comparison (for the week of June 11), the Pew Research Center found that while 33% of

Fagetti 5 Americans followed the Iraq War closely, only 7% of the overall news coverage was devoted to this issue (Paulson par. 1). This is the complete opposite of the war that is most often compared to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The media coverage during the Vietnam War motivated people to make a stand on their views about the war. During the Vietnam era, the daily coverage of the war was a large motivator to the antiwar movement, and helped the movement gain traction because people viewed the news reports as confirmation on what a horrible, bloody war the conflict in Southeast Asia had become. Thus, they started protests against the war. However in regards to todays conflicts, the groups that protest the conflicts that we are involved in do not gain traction because many do not see the carnage and gritty reporting necessary to evoke a response drastic enough as fighting civil order in order to get the point across that a war should be stopped. Also, with uninspiring reporting, the public is missing out on three important aspects of the Afghanistan war. Finally, the reporting that we get today is not relatable to the common American on how the war affects them personally even if they have no personal ties to the conflict. For example, the conflict is very draining on the federal budget. 100,000 American troops and 40,000 other NATO personnel are fighting at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $2 billion a week (Hanrahan par. 2). With more coverage, this conflict could have ended sooner. During the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement by seeing the inspiring news reports to go to the government and requesting the United States to leave Southeast Asia. However, with the Afghanistan conflict has had such bad press coverage that no one is inspired to go and end the war sooner rather than later. The future has been changed by this chain of events. If press coverage of conflicts continues to be lessened, the people who may have been inspired by great reporting were not able to make a change for the better. If the press was better

Fagetti 6 with covering the war, then those people who are inspired to do something for their country could be the founders of the movement that bring the war to the end sooner. However, this press style of lack of focus on overseas conflicts will continue, and the society that will result will be bogged down by longer conflicts that could have been ended sooner, and in the end, save lives.

Fagetti 7 Works Cited Eromeyer. "AFGHANISTAN: Why Is the War Not Being Mentioned in the Presidential Campaign?" Transatlantic-magazine.org. TransAtlantic Magazine, 9 Aug. 2012. Web. 04 Nov. 2013. Folkenflik, David. "Hey, Media: Where's The Afghanistan Coverage?" NPR. NPR, 24 Aug. 2009. Web. 04 Nov. 2013. Hanrahan, John. "The War without End Is a War with Hardly Any News Coverage." Nieman Watchdog. Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, 10 Aug. 2011. Web. 04 Nov. 2013. "Obama on Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal (Transcript)." ABC News. ABC News Network, 22 June 2011. Web. 04 Nov. 2013. Paulson, C. M. "Iraq War, 2008 Election Media Coverage Lacking, Research Suggests." Voices.yahoo.com. Yahoo Voices, 25 June 2007. Web. 04 Nov. 2013. Ricchiardi, Sherry. "Whatever Happened to Iraq? ." Whatever Happened to Iraq? | American Journalism Review. American Journalism Review, n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2013. Zornick, George. "Media Withdraws From Covering Complex Afghan War." Thinkprogress.org. ThinkProgress, 20 Dec. 2010. Web. 04 Nov. 2013.