"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is,' is," Bill Clinton notoriously said during his 1998 grand jury testimony on the Monica Lewinsky affair. And, in regard to the war on terrorism, journalism educators and mainstream media are Rather Clintonesque (bad pun intended): it depends upon the meaning of the word 'truth.' Virgnia Tech professor Jim Kuypers, author of the penetrating book Bush's War, tells of the dishonesty that is part and parcel of how we educate journalists and do journalism. The result is a media and educational elite actively undermining our efforts to win the War on Terror.

Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story. That’s as true of academia as it is of the media.

The press and academia have already established their point of view on George Bush, the Iraq war, and the War on Terror. Academics believe that the press was permissive in its reporting, treating Bush with kid gloves, and the press believes it did not do enough to expose the Bush administration’s “misleading” statements and to actively counter Bush administration’s efforts to lead us to war. Both positions are flat out wrong according to my findings. And I let them know. So what happened? No surprise:

• Bill Moyers on PBS ignored the facts—and went right on reporting falsehoods
• Mainstream media ignored the facts—and went right on reporting falsehoods
• Editor & Publisher ignored the facts—and went right on urging media to report falsehoods
• Academics ignored the facts—and went right on reporting an incomplete picture

Bush's War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age is part of my ongoing project to detect news media bias in political news coverage. An important part of this project is to provide the means to others to detect this bias on their own.

The book, written for an audience with diverse interests, relays the results of a study I conducted that examined how President Bush and the mainstream news media depicted the War on Terror. Unless one reads the transcripts, everything the president says about the War on Terror is been filtered through the press. I wanted to see what effect news coverage had on the president’s efforts to discuss the war, and in order to do this I examined speeches given by President Bush and then looked at the press coverage of those speeches. My central questions were, What did Bush say, and what did the press say he said?

I examined important speeches from 9/11/01 to 11/2005. Essentially I looked for themes about the War on Terror that the president used, and then look at what themes the press used when reporting on what the president said. The next step was to determine how those themes were framed in order to make a comparison between press frames and those of the president. This type of comparison allows us detect differences in the frames presented to the American people by the president and the press, and then determine the nature of any press bias.

Framing is something found everyday in press reporting. It is basically a process whereby reporters, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages readers of viewers to interpret in a particular way the facts of a given situation. Frames operate in four key ways: they define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies. Frames are often found within a narrative account of an issue or event, and are generally the central organizing idea in continuous news coverage. Looking at news reports given over time, particularly those reports surrounding a specific event or issue, makes it easier to detect these frames.

Americans aren’t taught to detect bias in the news, but they are naturally suspicious of the news, and polling data suggest that even without formal instruction in bias detection, that Americans are increasingly skeptical of their news organizations. For example, a 2007 Pew Research Center poll found that the “American public continues to fault news organizations for a number of perceived failures, with solid majorities criticizing them for political bias, inaccuracy and failing to acknowledge mistakes.” From 1985 to 2007 we see the following shifts among American attitudes toward the mainstream news media: those finding the media immoral, 13% to 32%; those finding reporters hurting democracy, 23% to 36%; those finding that the media report inaccurate stories, 34% to 53%; those believing the press to be politically biased, 45% to 55%. Those Americans regularly seeking news online have an even higher degree of dissatisfaction and skepticism.

These are amazing shifts, and point to a news institution in need of a “wake up and smell the coffee” moment. Americans are increasingly deciding not to believe journalists. Another Pew Research Center poll found that between 1985 and 2005, the believability of the local paper dropped from 84% to 54%; the believability of the network news dropped from 87% to 64%. This same poll found that a meager 21% of Americans felt that the press dealt fairly with all sides in a political controversy.
I think the difficulty with news media education lies not with Americans’ judgment about news organizations, but rather in their ability to prove what they see happening in the news. That is where I have aimed my efforts.

The results of my study show that the Americans represented by the figures above are right to question the media, especially where the War on Terror is concern. Bush’s War looks at several important issues: the War on Terror, President Bush, and media bias; I explain how the news media has shaped what Americans know about that war, and how completely different the media version of the war is from the president’s. Many of President Bush’s main arguments—for instance, the nature of the terrorists and the nature of the War on Terror—were ignored soon after 9/11 and continue to be ignored even today. Such exclusions prevent Americans from judging for themselves the administration’s reasons for going to war.

In each chapter I examine in detail a presidential speech and the following press coverage. I focused on the mainstream media, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News. The president's speeches following 9/11 are looked at together. I found that the news media echoed the president’s themes and the framing of those themes. Note I said, echoed. The press did present critics and oppositional points of view—an important press function—but it did not interject its own point of view into the coverage, and it relayed with accuracy what the president said. Just eight weeks later, however, the president’s spoke to the United Nations. Within that short period of time the press had turned, and was actually framing Bush as an enemy, right with the terrorists. Important to this time period, the press was also ignoring several major themes relayed by President Bush.

This oppositional framing both continued and escalated in each of the other speeches I looked at. Chapter four details the State of the Union Address of January 2002. Chapter five looks at the president’s speech that was made on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003. Anyone recall what the president said? How about that jet landing? Chapter six takes a look at another speech to the United Nations, this one in September 2003. By this time the press had completely turned on the president. Chapter Seven examines a speech of particular interest, the president’s November 2005 commemoration of Veteran’s Day. This is the speech the president gave when he first publicly attacked his Democrat critics over their remarks on the War on Terror. Although the president used about 4/5ths of his speech to lay out his plans for the War on Terror and the Iraq war—something the press had been demanding for months—the press framed coverage only in terms of the president attacking critics of his policies. Some reports actually asked for the exact plans for the war the President had just mentioned in his speech, thereby making it seem the President had not discussed that issue.

The last chapter brings everything together. Here I detail how the mainstream media failed Americans with its coverage of the War on Terror. You get a side-by-side look at the themes and frames used by president and press for each speech. Additionally, I detail how the media bias worked, what it looked like, and how the press operated as an anti-democratic institution. After reading this chapter, not only will you know what the press has done to diminish America’s options for fighting the War on Terror, you will also see how it continues to do this even today.

A book such as this one has two broad audiences: academic and the interested public. In the academic realm the book has met with positive and negative replies. Formal reviews (here and here) have generally been positive, although all attempts thus far to have an article version of the book’s results published have been unsuccessful.

Of note is that a major finding of this work is that it contradicts the findings of most of the literature on President Bush and the Press following 9/11. Most academic literature suggests that the press was coddling and permissive with the President and that this attitude eventually enabled Bush to lead us to war. The flaw with these studies is that they invariably look only at the first few weeks of coverage following 9/11. Bush’s War looks at four years of coverage.

Efforts at having the mainstream press take notice have been utterly unsuccessful. Even with a formal press release that set the record here at Tech for unique internet hits, not a single mainstream press entity noticed the study. Even Bill Moyers ignored the findings of the book in his allegedly nonbiased report, Buying the War. Moyers stated that “Four years ago on May 1, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln wearing a flight suit and delivered a speech in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. He was hailed by media stars as a "breathtaking" example of presidential leadership in toppling Saddam Hussein.” The media lead up to the Moyers’s piece was supportive. Even Editor & Publisher gushed at the opportunity to support Moyers. What I found in my study was the exact opposite, namely that the press mocked Bush, tried to discredit him, and shifted the news focus from Iraq to the US economy and an upcoming Presidential election. Many news organizations, including Fox news, were running stories on Moyers, but not a one responded to suggestions they look at the findings of Bush’s War. Findings which question, if not discredit, many of Moyers’s claims.

Of note, however, is that several bloggers did notice the study. The Cassandra Page and Little Green Footballs posted information about the initial release of the book. Additionally, when the Soros funded Center for Public Integrity published results of a report in which they basically said President Bush lied to lead us to war, numerous papers and news organization reported what essentially was a press release. I contacted each of these sources and provided information on my study and links to the press release. Not one organization responded or reported that contradictory information was available. Several blogs did notice, however, with two running full posts: Hotair.com and Bob Owens of PajamasMedia.com. This seems to support observtions by some media critics that blogs are now assuming a watchdog function on the media.

The common thread here is that both the press and academia have already established their point of view on this. Academics believe that the press was permissive in its reporting, treating Bush with kid gloves, and the press believes it did not do enough to expose the Bush administration’s “misleading” statements and to actively counter Bush administration’s efforts to lead us to war. Both positions are flat out wrong according to my findings.

So the question is, Why bring public attention to a study that contradicts what you believe?

Well, no reason at all except…well, you can fill in the rest.