Embedded Journalism and the Coverage of Iraq 2003 War: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Fox News Website

Abstract

Noam Chomsky has discussed the bias of American media in covering events according to political economy interests and pro-Israeli position, for instance. Looking for the connections between public opinion and the media, focusing on the position of the American government during the first Gulf War, as Mueller, Seaver and Page stated, shows that the United States government has been trying to influence the media in critical situations like wartime. In this study, we are attempting to evaluate Embedded Journalism as a new method of coverage in the Iraq 2003 War. There are plenty of studies in the field of embedded journalism; however, this study is going to measure the objectivity of the Foxnews’ coverage, according to Mindich theory (2000). The study is concentrating on Americans invasion to Iraq in 2003 (from March 20 to April 9, 2003), that have been coined by journalists as “The Fall of Baghdad”. In this study 217 articles of clip descriptions and leads of live reports of embedded journalists have been analyzed.