New Study on Local TV War Coverage

[SOURCE: Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy press release]
The Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy (GRIID) has released a new study entitled “Violence, Soldier Deaths and Omissions: Local TV News Coverage of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.” This study looks at war coverage by Grand Rapids TV broadcasters during the period from August 1 to November 8, 2005. Key findings of this study are: 1) The majority of all local TV coverage about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was focused on area soldier deaths or local soldiers returning home. 2) Coverage of Iraq was primarily focused on violence with little contextual information provided. 3) Coverage of Afghanistan was almost nonexistent with only three stories about Afghanistan appearing during the study period on all three stations combined. 4) The primary sources used in news coverage were US government officials, military personnel, or friends and family of those in the military. 5) There were very few Iraqi voices (5) and no Afghani voices in the entire 72 day study period. 6) There were very few stories with dissenting voices. Cindy Sheehan was the primary dissenting voice in most anti-was stories.
http://www.griid.org/localnews/mediaalert.php?alertId=17
See full report online at:
http://www.griid.org/pdfs/War_Coverage_2005.pdf