Page 39 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Public Trust, Media, and the "War on Terror"

Table 1.6

Frequency of Viewer Misperceptions
on Iraq in 2003
Misperceptions:

1. That Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction

2. That Iraq had Ties to A1 Qaeda

3. That the International Community Supported the U.S. War

Channel's Examined Percent of Viewers with One or
More Misperceptions

Fox
CNN
CBS
ABC
NBC
PBS

Finally, the international community can be contrasted with the American
public in that, unlike most Americans, it rejected humanitarian justifications
claimed for the occupation of Iraq. At the time of the invasion, 74 percent of
Americans surveyed accepted the "liberation of Iraq" as a vital goal in "Opera-
tion Iraqi Freedom." Accepting this democratic justification for war, 56 percent
of Americans asked in 2005 were still confident that "Iraqi leaders can create a
stable government" in occupied lraq." International opposition to the Iraq war,
conversely, was often driven by the assessment that the United States was not
adequately concerned with the welfare of the global community. It was accepted
throughout much of the Muslim world and Europe that the United States was not
seriously concerned with the "interests and needs" of the people of these re-
gions, as "control [of] Mideast oil" was considered to be a major policy goal for
American political leaders.89 On the subject of Iraq, majorities in Jordan, Mo-
rocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia indicated that they felt the U.S. effort
to restore sovereignty to Iraq through elections is "only cosmetic," rather than a
full handover of power and sovereignty to the new Iraqi