Photographic coverage during the Persian Gulf and Iraqi wars in three U.S. newspapers

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 82, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 623-637

  King, Cynthia ^a   Lester, Paul Martin ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MEDIA ROLE; MILITARY INTERVENTION; POLITICAL CONFLICT;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 29744438267     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900508200309     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Malcom W. Browne, "The Military vs. the Press," New York Times 3 March 1991, sec. 6, p. 27.
2. Julianne H. Newton, The Burden of Visual Truth: The Role of Photojournalism in Mediating Reality (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2001), 100.
3. "Lawsuit on Gulf War Press Curbs Dismissed," New York Times, 17 April 1991, sec. A, p. 12.
4. Sherry Ricchiardi, "Close to the Action," American Journalism Review, retrieved 4 August 2003 from .
5. Project for Excellence in Journalism, "Embedded Reporters: What are Americans Getting?" retrieved 4 August 2003 from .
6. David Shaw, "Embedded Reporters Make for Good Journalism," Los Angeles Times, 6 April 2003, part 5, p. 12.
7. Shaw, "Embedded Reporters," 15.
8. Jack Shafer, "The General who Devised the 'Embedded' Program Deserves a Fourth Star," Slate, 25 March 2003, retrieved 17 July 2003 from .
9. "Assessing Media Coverage of the War in Iraq: Press Reports, Pentagon Rules, and Lessons for the Future," The Brookings Institution, 17 June 2003, retrieved 11 September 2005 from .
10. "Assessing Media Coverage of the War in Iraq."
11. William M. Arkini, "Good News from the Front," Los Angeles Times, 11 May 2003, sec. M, p. 1.
12. Anthony Swofford, "The Way We Live Now: The War at Home," New York Times, 30 March 2003, sec. 6, p. 18.
13. Personal E-mail received 23 July 2003.
14. Ted Spiker, "Cover Coverage: How U.S. Magazine Covers Captured the Emotions of the September 11 Attacks - and How Editors and Art Directors Decided on Those Themes," retrieved 17 July 2003 from .
15. Wim. Roefs, "From Framing to Frame Theory: A Research Method Turns Theoretical Concept" (paper presented at the annual meeting of AEJMC, August 1998).
16. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 7.
17. Shay Sayre and Cynthia King, Entertainment and Society Audiences, Trends, and Impacts (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003), 11.
18. Ralph D. Berenger, "Gulf War Fallout: A Theoretical Approach to Understand and Improve Media Coverage of the Middle East," Global Media Journal 3 (fall 2004), retrieved on 18 February 2005 from , 3.
19. Susan D. Ross, "Unconscious, Ubiquitous Frames," in Images the Injure Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media Second Edition, ed. Paul Martin Lester and Susan D. Ross (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003), 31-32.
20. Ross, "Unconscious, Ubiquitous Frames."
21. Differences between the field of view offered by a particular lens, the position of a photojournalist behind it, and the position of the subject of the image precluded assessing actual distances. Perceived distance is thus based on a careful analysis of the relative positioning of the subject and the photographer based on extensive professional experience and communicated to the coders.
22. Ole R. Holsti, Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1969).
23. The use of embedded staff photographers by each newspaper was minimal. For the week in 2003 analyzed for this study, the Chicago Tribune used one while the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times each employed two embedded photojournalists according to picture editors of the respective newspapers (personal communications, July 2005).
24. The four major picture agencies represented in this study contributed 196 pictures in 1991 and 311 in 2003. Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Associated Press (AP) percentages declined between the years (21% to 16.1% for AFP and 59.2% to 49.2% for the AP) while Reuters increased from 19.9% to 27.7% and Getty Images (which was founded in 1995) contributed 7.1% of the 2003 images from picture agencies.
25. David Carr, Jim Rutenberg, and Jacques Steinberg, "A Nation at War: Bringing Combat Home; Telling War's Deadly Story At Just Enough Distance," New York Times, 7 April 2003, sec. B, p. 13.
26. Carr, Rutenberg, and Steinberg, "A Nation at War," 13.
27. "Tribune Buys Times Mirror," 21 March 2000, retrieved 17 February 2005 from .
28. Judy Litt, "The Gray Lady gets a Splash of Color," retrieved 17 February 2005 from .
29. However, paper versions of the 2003 Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times newspapers were available so that the use of color could be studied on a limited basis. For the two newspapers, 142 or 40% of all the pictures published in 2003 for the two newspapers were printed in color. Furthermore, 107 or 75% of the color pictures for both newspapers were from the battlefield (content categories 1 - 6), 56 or 39% were taken by staff photographers, and 123 or 87% were placed on the front page and within the A section indicating an emphasis and importance in the use of color to help tell the story of the war to readers.
30. Sandra H. Utt and Steve Pasternack, "Front Page Design: Some Trends Continue," Newspaper Research Journal 24 (summer 2003): 59.
31. Warren Watson, "News and Design Considerations for the 50-inch Web," 28 November 2000, retrieved from on 18 February 2005.
32. Watson, "News and Design Considerations."
33. John Taylor, Body Horror Photojournalism, Catastrophe and War (NY: New York University Press, 1998), 7.
34. Deni Elliott, "Terrorists We Like and Terrorists We Don't Like" in Images that Injure Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media Second Edition, ed. Paul Martin Lester and Susan Dente Ross (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers 2004), 51.
35. Berenger, "Gulf War Fallout," 6-7.
36. Ross, "Unconscious, Ubiquitous Frames," 33.