THE TICKET

BY STEPHEN UTZ

During the presidential campaign, Americans heard a lot about Sarah Palin’s clothes, Barack Obama’s charisma and John McCain’s experience. We heard relatively little about Afghanistan.

In that rugged terrain, violence is increasing and a war many Americans had ignored or even forgotten about is raging once again.

The U.S. economy is struggling, the United States is fighting a two-front war and many businesses are failing. The media covered many of those issues during the campaign, but they neglected the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Media coverage of both wars declined as the presidential campaign began. In 2008, only 0.6 percent of the news coverage was devoted to the conflict in Afghanistan , according to a study by the Pew Research Center.

Foreign policy was an important issue throughout the summer. Media coverage reached a frenzy when Obama traveled to the region, but it was ignored when the economy began to struggle. The media’s audience was more concerned with the amount of money in their bank accounts and not with wars that seemed so far away.

Attacks in Afghanistan have made 2008 the deadliest year for U.S. troops since the invasion in 2001, according to a U.N. report on the situation released by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in September.

And 2007 was the second-most-violent year , according to the U.N. report. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has become one of the most dangerous parts of the world because insurgents are staging their attacks in that area. “When I talk to reporters, they say, ‘We can’t go in there unless we are embedded with coalition units,’” professor Sherry Ricchiardi said. “No one can get in there alone.”

Ricchiardi is a professor at the Indiana University School of Journalism and wrote a story on the lack of media in Afghanistan for the American Journalism Review.

The United Nations estimates that 983 security incidents have occurred this year through August, which is the highest total since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, according to the U.N. report.

A security incident includes bombings, shootings and other violent acts.

“Media have ignored Afghanistan for many reasons,” Ricchiardi said, “including resources being allocated to Iraq, which, at the time, was the hotter war. Now that is not the case.”

The decrease in coverage has been caused by many factors. But the economy and public opinion have had an effect on what stories have been covered recently. People were more worried about losing their homes, than they were about a long-forgotten war.

The press focused on domestic issues not only because of the importance of the story but also because people seemed to have an insatiable desire for more news on the subject. A survey released by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press shows that 70 percent of Americans say they followed the economic crisis with interest during the last week of September 2008, which was up from 56 percent the previous week. The media was doing a good job of informing people about the crisis, but that was all it focused on.

MSNBC.com only wrote one story regarding Afghanistan between July and November this year. But the channel has recently started to cover the region again with its Middle East bureau chief, Richard Engel, producing a series of stories about his time in Afghanistan during recent months. But until the middle of November, MSNBC did not follow the developments there closely. CNN and Fox News have reporters in the region, in Kabul or Islamabad, so they have covered the region with more scrutiny. NBC’s nearest bureau is in Baghdad. Blogs have not been much better. Politico’s Mike Allen only wrote about Afghanistan in his blog when Barack Obama traveled there in July.

Ricchiardi wrote that the soldiers in Afghanistan have been angered by the lack of coverage in Afghanistan. Maj. Cliff Gilmore of the U.S. Marine Corps is stationed in Afghanistan.

“In my opinion,” he said in an email interview, “ the media has pretty much ignored the entire global war on terror in favor of stories about what blows up and how many people die each day. Both the Afghan and Iraq campaigns will succeed or fail on the backs of the captains and the sergeants working in small teams out in the local community.”

The issue is not that the reporters who are covering the war in Afghanistan are doing a poor job. “Most reporters are professional enough,” Gilmore said, “but their supporting organizations aren’t willing to cough up the cash to keep their reporters on the ground with the troops. The return on investment for telling the story about what really goes on each day isn’t good for the shareholders.”

The reporters are filing stories for newspapers and television networks but the problem is that newspapers and networks will not give the spotlight to those stories. “We [the U.S. Army] have noticed that on the Afghanistan campaign there has not been quite as much coverage as when that campaign started,” Army Lt. Col. Mike Moose said. Moose is a public affairs officer at the Pentagon. “But we feel that it is obviously an important part of the global War on Terror.” The Army estimates that more than 200 media members have worked in Afghanistan this year, Moose said.

Smaller newspapers will only cover Afghanistan if there is a local tie, Ricchiardi said. “Newspapers are really fighting for their survival,” she said. “One editor said ‘it has to have a local tie before we even think about putting it on the front page.’”

This economic climate makes war reporting tougher. Coverage of the war is expensive. Security, housing and other resources must be paid for by the companies. The media is worried about the economy, too. Even before the economy began to struggle, the readership of most newspapers and the network ratings were declining. For example, The New York Times Company reported its net income for the third quarter to be a loss of $106 million.

Other companies’ profits have declined considerably from the same time last year. The Washington Post reported a third-quarter profit of $10 million compared to $72 million profit for the same time a year ago. “I think there should be more coverage of the war, but I understand it,” Sean Naylor said. “Particularly with newspapers across the United States going through some very hard times, there just may not enough resources to send reporters and photographers over there.” Naylor is a reporter for the Army Times who covers Afghanistan and wrote a book about the largest battle fought in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led invasion called “Not A Good Day to Die.”

Even before the economy began to crumble, MSNBC and NBC News combined their resources to cut costs. Each company has to decide where to place the focus for its stories. Few media outlets have bureaus in Afghanistan. The New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio maintain small bureaus there, Ricchiardi said. The Associated Press has a large operation that dwarfs the other outlets. Other organizations have reporters based in surrounding areas, such as Islamabad, Pakistan. But the bulk of the resources were devoted to the conflict in Iraq.

Now reporters are returning to Afghanistan. President-elect Obama has made it a priority in the wake of increasing violence in the country. Violence in Iraq is declining and the Iraqi government is on the verge of forcing U.S. troops into a more supportive role. The opposite is occurring in Afghanistan and most reporters are arriving late to the story.

Most media outlets focused their coverage on stories that the public wanted to read and watch, improving their ratings and readership. For two weeks in late September into October 2008, the majority of the coverage was devoted to the economy; we heard nothing about Afghanistan. “I think it [lack of coverage] probably does reflect the huge, dark hole that was created by the economic downturn,” said Chip Jones, author and former reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Jones is the author of “Red, White and Yellow: The Media and The Military at War in Iraq.”

Americans have seen a lot violence during the past seven years and the public is tired of it, Ricchiardi said. The war in Iraq was more difficult than expected and people got tired of hearing about a story that did not get better, she said. “If you talk to the average American, they aren’t that interested [in Afghanistan],” she said. “The average American doesn’t understand what is at stake.”

Stories that focused on who was leading and the strategy that the candidate had used to succeed or fail, also called horse-race coverage, accounted for 63 percent of the campaign coverage during the weeks of Sept. 8 to Oct.16, according to the Pew Research Center.

In future elections, the media needs to do a better job of covering all the issues in a campaign. They spent too much time on each candidate’s strategy and ignored important issues such as the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. Each candidate was unveiling his plans for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. All the plans were very similar and included a troop increase. The press did not ask the important questions: Will these policies work, are they what is needed for the specific situation in each country and how much will they cost?

These are the same questions that the media should have asked before the war in Iraq. Many high-profile members of the media have said that they have learned from their mistakes in the coverage of the buildup to that war. That is difficult to believe when few questions were asked about the strategies for Afghanistan and Iraq.

News organizations need to devote the resources to a conflict that has been forgotten by many Americans. They are in the business to provide information to citizens, and they have failed miserably. The news holes are narrower and many media outlets are giving prime space and airtime to the same subjects. “They should stop worrying about the bottom line and get back to informing the people,” Ricchiardi said. “It simply is not realistic to think that they will forget about the bottom line.”

Media organizations are in the business to make money but they also have a responsibility to inform their audience. Edward R. Murrow said of the media, “[This] instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire,” he said. “But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends.” The media should heed his words and begin to do its primary job of informing its audience once again.

Media companies need to change their strategy for covering Afghanistan in these tough economic times. Different divisions of companies should combine their resources, as NBC did to cut costs. Also, rival companies should pool their resources for security and lodging in Afghanistan. They should be in the business to bring the story to their viewers and readers rather than simply for profit. “News organizations that want to obtain a major presence outside of the military’s protective embrace, can pool their resources for living quarters and security and share a compound to cut down on costs,” Naylor said. Embedding with the military, which is already common, is another way to keep costs low, because the food, shelter and security is provided by the military, he said.

Even if media organizations focus more coverage toward the conflict in Afghanistan there is still the problem of viewers and readers not caring about the story. The media needs to spend more time telling the stories of individual soldiers and show the work that the military has done to improve the country. Americans are tired of hearing about the violence, but if the media humanizes the story instead of relaying the story of another roadside bombing, perhaps more people will begin to care. The percentage of the American public that has someone they know involved in these conflicts is very low, so they feel less connected to the wars, Naylor said. President-elect Obama has made Afghanistan a priority so more coverage of the conflict will be seen in the next few months. If the media tells the soldiers’ stories of heroism and the positive missions that they are undertaking, the public should take notice of the conflict again.

Post a Comment | Trackback URI