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Media at War: The Iraq Crisis is a very welcome addition to the growing literature on the news media coverage of Gulf War II. Like many other accounts of the Iraq conflict this book was produced very quickly, written during the summer and early autumn of 2003. Nevertheless, it provides a valuable starting point for examining the coverage. The authors acknowledge that the Internet (particularly the search engine ‘Google’), and the ease with which it is possible to store media content, made it possible to document media output in a way that was not possible during earlier conflicts. Indeed, the early chapters of the book contain many lengthy quotations from journalists, government officials and military personnel - most of which were obtained through Internet sources. These quotations, captured at a particular point in time, provide an insight into a variety of different perspectives leaving the reader largely left to form their own conclusions.

The authors are careful to clearly define the scope of the study which is, in their own words, “exclusively the media themselves” with the main focus on the “news gathering process and the thematic analysis of news output.” (2004:1). Drawing on previous studies of war reporting, Tumber and Palmer provide a sense of how embedded journalists inevitably became participants in the war effort rather than mere observers. Some of the chapters deal with familiar ground that has been covered elsewhere but, nevertheless, the book raises important issues concerning the nature of the relationship between journalists and their sources and the nature and role of journalistic objectivity.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the arrangements for the media facilitation of Gulf War II, with chapters on embedding, safety, identifying with the military and information management. Part II examines media coverage and is based upon a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of media reporting. Part III documents the conflict that developed between the British government and the BBC over the reporting of the WMD controversy and the subsequent publication of the Hutton Report.

Clearly written, Media at War is full of fascinating details of how journalists reported the war. One of its strengths is that it does not solely focus on the actual period of invasion but also examines pre-invasion and post-invasion phases. New empirical findings are presented based upon a quantitative content analysis of national press and TV news coverage, together with a qualitative analysis of a small number of news reports. Interestingly, Tumber and Palmer’s findings concerning whose voices dominated the reporting of the war on BBC and ITN bulletins conflict with those of the Cardiff University study conducted by Justin Lewis and colleagues (p104). Whilst the Cardiff University study suggests that the BBC were more likely to use UK government sources than ITN, Tumber and Palmer found that there were no significant differences between these channels in this respect. Also, there is another incompatibility between the findings of Tumber and Palmer in relation to the use of material attributed to official Iraqi sources and those of the Cardiff University team. Here again the authors find no significant differences, whereas the Cardiff University researchers conclude that there were important divergences between the two channels. Overall, Tumber and Palmer’s findings suggest a marked homogeneity between the BBC and ITN’s reporting of Gulf War II, although the BBC was more likely to portray the military in a bad light than ITV.

The authors are reluctant to take sides on the Iraq conflict and, in relation to issues of bias in the reporting of Gulf War II, state that other studies, including their own: “… are based on inter-channel comparisons, not upon some independent, external benchmark; thus all judgements about objectivity are comparative, not absolute.” (2004:96) Media at War raises important issues concerning objectivity and the relationship between news sources and the media but would have been strengthened by more in-depth analysis. Perhaps future analyses of the news media coverage of Gulf War II will explore further the important insights presented in this valuable study and shed more light upon the complex variables that impact upon news gathering processes in contemporary warfare.

Alison Anderson
University of Plymouth

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