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US TV Networks Covered the War in Ukraine more than the US Invasion of Iraq — Global Issues


Screenshot / nbcnews.com
  • by Jim Lobe (Washington DC)
  • Joint press service

Combined, the three networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – spent 562 minutes for the entire first month of the war in Ukraine. That is more time than the first month of the US invasion of Panama in December 1989 (240 minutes), the invasion of Somalia in 1992 (423 minutes), and even the first month of the invasion of Afghanistan in December. 11 year 2001 (306 minutes) ), according to a comment was published Thursday by Andrew Tyndall, who has been tracking and encoding the nightly news of three networks every day of the week since 1988.

“Strikingly, the two peak months for the Iraq war were both less saturated than the previous month in Ukraine (414 minutes in March 2003 and 455 minutes in April),” he wrote. “… The only three months of war in the last 35 years of greater intensity than the previous one were Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 (1,208 minutes) and his subsequent removal in May. 1 and February 1991 (1,177 and 1,033 minutes, respectively). ”

However, it was a time when the evening news online spent a third more time on foreign news than in recent years when international news reported. fell to an all-time low.

Last month’s coverage of Ukraine was even overshadowed by the wide coverage of three networks about the tumultuous end of Washington’s 20-year war in Afghanistan last summer. Last August, the month with the most intense coverage, the three networks spent a total of 345 minutes (or just about 60% of Ukraine’s total coverage last month) covering the sudden war. After the complete withdrawal of US forces on August 31, Afghanistan’s network coverage fall downhill a total of just 103 minutes from September 1 to the end of the year, despite the country’s humanitarian situation that followed (and still exists).

While the major cable news networks generally receive more public attention, the evening news programs of ABC, CBS, and NBC generally remain the most important source of international news in the United States. .

On weeknights, on average some 20 million viewers in the US Follow national news programs on one or more of the three networks. That’s nearly four times the number of people who trust the major cable broadcasters — Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN — for their primetime news. According to Tyndall, an additional two million people watch online news over the internet. Actual news content on each network is approximately 22 minutes in length; in March, the total minutes of content for all three weekday evening news programs will reach about 1500 minutes.

Historically, the amount of coverage of wars abroad has been positively correlated with direct US military involvement. “The normal expectation is that wars are always more believable in America when American lives are in danger,” said Tyndall, who noted that the only war in the last few decades where networks have spent so much time The time in a month equal to the total of previous months reporting on Ukraine was in Kosovo in April 1999 (565 minutes) when US aircraft led the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in late February, “overturned all normal patterns of press response,” according to Tyndall. He places much of his credit for the leadership and media savvy of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has controlled much of the narrative that reaches Americans online.

“It is a testament to Zelensky’s perceived credibility that both ABC World News tonight and NBC Nightly News decided to appoint their curator for a lengthy interview with him, despite the fact that he won’t speak English means that the audio will include Tyndall observing the low tone of a simultaneous interpreter.

It also helps with “the overall structure of the Kyiv-based coverage,” in part because Russia’s strict censorship regime, among other things, makes it difficult to cover Moscow’s views. much more. Tyndall commented: “What is more unusual for the American media, however, is that there is little precious news coming out of Washington. “Usually in a war in which the United States is not involved, the American media will be the default position to seek a fair and balanced way to present both sides of the conflict. punch. Zelensky’s admission that, this time, networks have no problem seeing conflicts from his perspective. “

This has extended to networks dealing with the refugee crisis caused by the Russian invasion. “Typically, refugees are a problem seen on both sides: desperate Syrians, Haitians, or Central Americans looking at the border for humanitarian relief – and immigration officials at checkpoints guard against an unscheduled flow that could overwhelm the host country,” according to Tyndall. “In this case… there is no doubt that these refugees, mainly women and children and the elderly, are on the right path to flight, unarmed, as he put it. .”

According to Tyndall, the fact that all three networks sent their anchors to Lviv or Poland to cover displaced people and refugees underscored the importance of the story and the aspect they are taking. .

In emphasizing the importance of Zelinsky’s own role, Tyndall noted that last month’s intensity of coverage is not explained by the uniqueness or importance of US national security to Ukraine itself. During the whole of 2014, when both the pro-Moscow government in Kyiv was overthrown and Moscow invaded and annexed Crimea, and supported separatist forces in the Donbas, these three networks contributed a total of 392 minutes, or average just over 32 minutes a month. . Of course, that invasion resulted in US and Western sanctions against Russia, sending relations downhill from which they never recovered.

The networks’ attachment to Ukraine has essentially filled the “news hole” for international news. Only brief passages, including North Korean missile tests, plane crash in the East China Sea, US-China talks (also centered around Ukraine) and Venezuela’s release of two oil executives US mines have been one or more networks mentioned during the month. The economic situation in Russia itself, as well as the sanctions against Moscow and the country’s oligarchs – both of which are directly related to Ukraine in any case – are also the subject of discussions. disjointed story.

The Ukraine News in March also offers the latest developments on the devastating humanitarian crises wrought by Afghanistan’s collapsing economy and the ongoing wars in Yemen and Ethiopia.

This Original story published by Statecraft Responsible

© Inter Press Service (2022) – All rights reservedOrigin: Inter Press Service



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