Chapter 7

Television news frames

How is television able to make the world beyond our own senses "look natural"? Do we, the audience, decide what we watch on television or do the media set our agendas and expectations by reporting and emphasizing certain issues while ignoring and belittling others? These questions are raised and examined by Todd Gitlin in his inquiry into the news media's role in reporting student protest against the war in Vietnam. In that study, Gitlin concludes that the media do indeed "define...public images," and that they achieve this through a journalistic mechanism known as "framing." The mechanism of framing is another means by which the media simulate reality. This "reality" is assembled by producing

... persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by which symbol-handlers routinely organize discourse, whether verbal or visual. [Italics Gitlin's.]

To take an example, Gitlin points our attention to the student anti-Vietnam War movement of the early 1960s in the United States. The news media at first ignored the extensive and well-organized protest by students on campuses around the United States. However, only five years after the protests began, the media "discovered" it. "But," Gitlin asks, "which movement" did the media actually discover? When it came to reporting the reality of those massive protests against an unpopular war with a country few Americans had even heard of, the American television news networks "emphasized certain themes and scanted others." As Gitlin so comprehensively points out, "deprecatory themes began to emerge, then to recur and reverberate." The American media were exercising their privilege to arrange, select and interpret images which would go towards depicting the reality of an unpopular war and its reception by the American people for American television audiences.

This is not to say, however, that the mechanism of framing, as it is used in the production of news in the media, is always an attempt at controlling what audiences see and hear. News frames are everyday tools, used by journalists out of necessity. Necessity dictates that within any event "there is an infinity of noticeable details." No news story can be reported in its entirety, which means that inevitably some editing involving some process of selection, emphasis, and representation must be employed by any journalist when presenting news events to audiences. News frames are, as Gitlin emphasizes, "composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters." In other words, journalists must frame reality "in order to negotiate it," and it is therefore essential for the critical observer of media to ask certain crucial questions, such as

What is the frame here? Why this frame and not another? What patterns are shared by the frames clamped over this event and the frames clamped over that one, by frames in different media in different places at different moments? And how does the news-reporting institution regulate these regularities?

The journalistic necessity of framing, however, can be used, under certain circumstances, for interpreting and depicting stories in the media according to the ideological criteria of a particular class or group. As Gramsci has already pointed out, especially when a crisis in society occurs, certain "incurable structural contradictions" reveal themselves, causing the "political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure" to make "every effort to cure them..." It is during these times that "the forces of opposition organise" and develop "a series of ideological, religious, philosophical, political, and juridical polemics..." And it is at this "conjuncture" in history that those who are able to influence and control the media's ideological hegemony are "pushed to the extremity of its self-contradiction, and snaps..." At this point one may witness how the dominant media frames shift abruptly so that society's elites "(including owners and executives of media corporations) are more likely to intervene directly in journalistic routine, attempting to keep journalism within harness."

The Vietnam War, and particularly the climate produced in the United States by the widespread protest against that war, is one example of a historical "conjuncture" in which an abrupt shift took place in media reporting. It was a shift away from journalistic routine and it served to control free journalistic expression. More recently, other examples of an abrupt shift away from free journalistic expression have occurred, and one such example is the western media's reporting of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

The "framing devices" employed by television news to portray the protest against the war in Vietnam, as described by Gitlin, although essential for media criticism, do not fully explain the role of the audience. Audiences develop certain expectations from television news, expectations which vary from culture to culture, and these expectations also have a definite effect on how reality is presented by broadcasters on the screen. A critical analysis of the discourse of news frames must, therefore, also consider the concept of framing, but not just as a tool or mechanism used by journalists, but as an element of discourse exchange and expectation.

Analyzing frames as discourse

Eco defines the meaning of a frame by drawing on current research in artificial intelligence. The "notion of a frame," says Eco, can be illustrated by using the following statements as an example:

"John was sleeping when he was suddenly awakened. Somebody was tearing up the pillow."

A computer, relying on "dictionary-like information," when confronted with the above sentence, according to Eco's analysis, "would be able to understand what /to sleep/ and /pillow/ mean, but would be unable to establish what the relation is between John and the pillow (and which pillow?)." If, however, the addressee "is endowed with an enlarged encyclopedic competence which encompasses also a set of frames, or scripts...," it is possible to conclude that "human beings usually sleep in bedrooms and that bedrooms are furnished with beds, beds with pillows, and so on."

As Eco has indicated, by combining two or more scripts, or frames, the addressee (whether computer or human) is able to grasp that "the pillow just mentioned can only be the one John was resting his head on." In this way Eco is showing how audiences decode messages by means of resorting to a stock of accumulated competence, perhaps even a series of familiar scenarios which are on store as encyclopedic data derived from cultural experience, to fill in the missing links of information, in this case the relation between John and his pillow.

By this reasoning, therefore, as Van Dijk has already pointed out, one can conclude that there is more than just one message communicated through the text and structure of a television news broadcast. By means of analogy, one might compare the journalistic mechanism involved in the presentation of the news to television audiences with that of a computer server using hypertext links to other documents on distant servers. Although the contents of a certain text can be "read" and comprehended on the surface, one is also able to take advantage of "links" to other documents, scripts and entire programs of stored data, lying and waiting below the surface of extraneous communication. What we actually see and hear in a news broadcast is therefore only the "tip of the iceberg," that is, only the shell of an elaborate stock of stored, encyclopedic competence, upon which one can draw, consciously or unconsciously, and which belongs to and is often shared by the sender, the receiver and much or all of society at large.

Included in this stored, encyclopedia of competence is the ritualization and formalization of presentation styles. These are also processes controlled by established schema or scripts which are likewise able to impart meaning to a broadcast. Although "news" is supposed to consist of yet untold facts, audiences turn on their televisions expecting something which conforms with their particular concept of "news." In this sense, Deborah Tannen's apt description of a frame as "the power of expectation," turns the concept of a media frame into "self-fulfilling prophecy," and "anticipation." According to Tannen,

In order to function in the world, people cannot treat each new person, object or event as unique and separate. The only way we can make sense of the world is to see the connections between things, and between present things we have experienced before or heard about.

In the study of language, Tannen adds, the term "frame" has been a concept employed in anthropological and sociological analysis, as well as "the structuralist notion of syntagmatic frames." Researchers, however, have used various terms to denote the meaning of "frame," including "schema," "categorization," "pattern," "setting," and "structures of expectation." Also, in the field of computer simulation and social behavior, including the study of ideology, the term "script" has been used.

"What unifies all these branches of research," says Tannen, is that "expectations make it possible to perceive and interpret objects and events in the world." In addition, she notes, expectations "shape those perceptions to the model of the world provided by them. Thus, structures of expectation make interpretation possible, but in the process they also reflect back on perception of the world to justify that interpretation."

Tannen's statement that "structures of expectation...reflect back on perception of the world to justify...interpretation" is echoed by Ruth Wodak who considers media frames as "ideology." According to Wodak, the "general concept" of "ideology" often has a "negative connotation," but ideologies, like "structures of expectation," "create and propagate a secondary reality which one either has to believe in (in totalitarian systems) or may believe in (democratic systems)." The term "ideology," therefore, can also be used synonymously with "myth." Myths abound in television broadcasting. When myths are repeated, a "new reality" is created.

This new reality appears to be logically consistent and self-contained; and it is manifest in its very own language. The indicators are to be found on all the linguistic levels: in the lexicon, in the syntax, on the text and discourse level and even in the phonology...

In a democracy, says Wodak, there is a "political opinion-forming" process at work. Television audiences "choose" between "experts" with "implicit ideas concerning political life" and, in fact, everything in the "realm of the politically conceivable." Myth, or ideology, is constantly being created by television and presented to audiences as "reality." Framing in the media is one of the main vehicles by which myths enter the realm of public discourse.

"Instantly recognizable 'concepts' with a presold market"

Although framing is essential to television news production, it has the effect of producing "symbolic content messages" which communicate meanings to audiences. Frames, as coded messages, are also "rhetorical gestures" which are consciously or unconsciously considered newsworthy by television news producers and their audiences. Frames also, because of their technical nature, can be repeated and used for different stories, especially those frames which strike the right chord and successfully fulfill their designed promotional purpose.

As has been illustrated, there are many reasons for framing the news and ideological reasons are certainly not the most important. There are purely commercial reasons, as well as technical reasons. Newspaper articles, for example, are usually written in such a way that the reader can browse at will from story to story. An article in The New York Times is written in the form of a pyramid, with the main thesis at the beginning, which is then developed into a more complex form by the end of the story. In the United States newspapers either monopolize their markets entirely, or they speak to small, specialized audiences-people who represent specific markets for targeted advertising. In the newspaper business, direct competition with other newspapers within one market area is rare. American commercial television, on the other hand, incorporates into its news broadcasts certain frames which are formulas designed exclusively for the needs of commercial television. Television, as a communications, information-giving medium, is not as mature as newspaper journalism, and its present state of development is where the press was in the days of Citizen Kane, when there was still competition between newspapers in the biggest markets. The big American networks, as well as their affiliated local stations, are competing against each other, not to mention the newer cable networks and cable stations which subdivide the market into even smaller segments. The consequence is that each news broadcast is actually delivering to its sponsors smaller and smaller audience fragments of the total television-viewing population. The solution to this aggregate drop in market share is to devise frames which are better able to compete. Competitive frames have more action, more entertainment, more one-on-one intimacy, more news in the public interest for the purpose of attracting more viewers.

Commercial television, therefore, is forced to devise frameworks for story-telling which will successfully deliver a qualitative audience in sufficient numbers to the sponsor's commercial-television must "carry the audience along." For these reasons, as Gitlin has so accurately pointed out, the news story takes the form of a circle. The thesis is developed throughout the story, but the reporter always returns to do the "wrap up" at the end.

In commercial television news broadcasting, especially in the United States, competition is the driving force behind the structuring of news frameworks. If one commercial news program or network devises a commercially or politically successful frame for a story, competitors are obliged to pick up the frame and continue with the story. To reinterpret an existing frame would be running the risk of contradicting media-established "truth," while frames tend to filter back to re-establish and re-define reality.

A good example of a commercially successful frame is the story of Tonya Harding, the Olympic ice skating champion who allegedly conspired to attack her rival, Nancy Kerrigan. Never mind that no concrete evidence of her guilt was found before the frame was devised. Still, CBS had a commercial interest in playing up the story because, as was admitted afterwards by television executives, the frame of an evil ice skater attacking her good rival attracted audiences to the upcoming Olympic games, which, co-incidentally, were being covered exclusively by CBS. Advertisers, naturally, "rejoiced" at the unexpectedly large audiences which were attracted by the spectacle. Competitors, such as CNN and NBC, not wishing to kill their advertisers' goose that laid the golden egg, continued to develop the frame. As the Tonya Harding frame appreciated in value, in the same way any other commodity would acquire value after advertising, CBS could then consider raising its price for advertising space during the upcoming summer Olympic games.

There is a wide diversity of possible television news frames which can be devised by television news, which David Altheide calls "instantly recognizable 'concepts' with a presold market."

What's less obvious is the genre's habit, exacerbated by haste, of reducing a complex story to the simplest, most viewer-friendly terms...Still, get ready for a lot more. In high-visibility disasters like Waco, the networks see a way to survival: instantly recognizable "concepts" with a presold market...We've reached the point," says ABC's Parkin, "where TV movies and news shows are competing for the very same stories."

The journalist, working for commercial broadcast media, must have the goal of presenting the television story in such a way that audiences can be created, then held long enough for sponsors to proclaim the advantages of their products. With this necessity in mind, one can more easily grasp the reasons for a story structure which is segmented in such a way that audiences are "teased" along to the next commercial break by means of journalistic devices deliberately aimed at building up anticipation by means of hyperbole, epideictic language, attractive images and sounds.

Hyperbole, which is often found in commercials, brings us to another dissimilarity between the news as it is presented in newspapers and that which appears in commercial television news broadcasts. This dissimilarity concerns the rhetorical arguments as they are presented to audiences. Primeau, in his analysis of American television's rhetorical style, reveals persuasion as a specific rhetorical, but very subtle tool for influencing audiences. He compares the rhetoric of American television with the classical rhetorical category of persuasion, known as the "epideictic," which reveals itself most vividly in the use of ceremony. As opposed to other forms of persuasion, such as that used in a court of law, for example, in which the evidence and a logical argument are submitted for judgment according to the rules of logic, epideictic persuasion, according to Primeau, seeks to convince through the use of various types of ceremony, or exaggerated praise or blame. Repetition and the repetition of formulas abounds in epideictic persuasive techniques, as do spectacle, display and ritual. Examples of all of these characteristics of epideictic persuasion are represented in most American commercial broadcasts, including news. Epideictic persuasion is recognizable, very predictable, and can be easily accepted by audiences as an implicit element of commercial television. Furthermore, precisely because it is accepted and taken for granted as a "normal" part of television broadcasting, especially in the United States, it is often ignored by both audiences and critics alike.

Primeau has also observed that epideictic persuasion is used in such a way that logical arguments are discarded by broadcasters. In their stead, spectacle, repetition and ritual have become the rule. Gitlin offers an excellent example of spectacle in American television, where repetition and ritual in commercial news employ populist frames which consistently pit "the wisdom of the people" and the "little guy" against big government or crime or foreign enemies.

The media frame: an informational commodity unit

Framing in broadcast news media, therefore, is derived from the broadcast news writer's need to edit out, emphasize certain themes and simplify others. News editors, directors, journalists and virtually everyone involved in creating the news are confronted with this necessity. Framing is a common occurrence and stories are framed by journalists for various reasons. The news media, whether operating electronically or in hard copy, whether commercial or public service, must endow their medium with a certain structure, one which serves many aims, including technical, economic, political and ideological. The receivers of news, the audiences, also accept implicitly-and also expect implicitly-that a certain formalized frame will be used as "news" and therefore that certain stereotypes will be repeated consistently by the news media.

Television journalists, because of the time restrictions imposed on commercial and non-commercial media, do not have the time to present each and every story uniquely and in detail, nor, with deadlines to meet and relentless competition on the other channels, is there time to check to see if every fact is indeed true. Television news stories, therefore, are framed, meaning that their contents are modified to fit a certain established standard-a mold, one could say. The mold is made up of socially and professionally determined or market guided stereotypes. If this practice were not the rule, every unique news story could not possibly find a niche in the existing structure of news reporting provided by the medium and genre.

Textbooks about writing for broadcast news demonstrate quite clearly how journalists are taught to put news stories into certain implicitly accepted, and for the commercial media, marketable molds. Journalists learn the technique of shaping practically any story so that it displays certain characteristics which make that story surprisingly similar to other news stories surrounded by the same frame. Whether "breaking news" on television, a newspaper feature story, or "soft" news on NBC's Dateline, each story is written so that it fits a certain script or schema, which has proved to be acceptable to audiences, sponsors and broadcasters.

While Gitlin presents some of the concepts of news frames as they appear in the media, Newsom and Wollert present framing as a skill to be learned by students of journalism. In their textbook, Media Writing: News for the Mass Media, the authors mention both the marketplace and audiences. They inform students of broadcast journalism that "the marketplace for feature stories is unlimited" because news stories, especially "soft" news, can be "grouped into broad categories" which have a "clearly defined central theme." The audience is not left out of their analysis, for it is they who are offered "some form of reward...," such as a "structured dynamic conclusion," for having followed the story to the end.

The structured conclusion, or "reward" for the audience, is not only the key for understanding the dynamics of the commercial television news story, but it also helps to clarify the other essential component of the construction of news frame. As a guide in structuring "rewards" for audiences, the authors list categories of feature stories. The fact, however, that the stories are to be created for a commercial information medium seems to be an implicitly accepted fact by the textbook authors. The examples presented below are paraphrased, while direct quotes are included from Newsom's and Wollert's manual. (Italics are mine and indicate how the news writer gives structure to the frame.):

The news feature: The most common kind of story; developed around a "timely event," "something with immediacy," and is "more personal" with "human interest," using direct quotes, description and emotion. "At the core, though, it is news."


The personality sketch: A story which focuses on individual accomplishment, attitudes and outstanding characteristics; a profile which often depends on pictures.


The informative feature: Such stories deal with the bizarre, or the little known. "While the emphasis is on informing or educating the audience," the stories are popular and often "packaged" with a main news story.


The historical feature: This story is often inspired by the holidays or national events. "The writer's prime concern should be to make the historical chronicle relevant to a contemporary public."


The personal experience: A news story which recounts the accomplishments of an individual or group. "The disabled Vietnam veteran," for example, "who rolls across the state in wheelchair..." or the "student who spells prestidigitator correctly and wins the county spelling bee..." are examples.


The descriptive feature: A story dealing with "tourist spots, recreational areas," and provides "specific facts...."


The how-to: Stories which include flower arranging, using home computers, etc. "The secret to a successful how-to feature is in its reward for the audience. A project or a suggestion that's too complicated, too expensive or too time-consuming is likely to lose the audience."


The enterprise: These are stories that "don't fit any specific category." "You look at a fairly common situation but ask 'Why?' and a story results..."


News stories, therefore, as Newsom and Wollert categorically show, are constructed to belong to certain story frames which are pre-fashioned and pre-defined by the professional news writer. Without being explicit, Newsom and Wollert are teaching readers how to "package" public information into merchandizable commodity units of discourse.

As Peter Braham explains, such stories become "slotted into a framework which is reassuringly familiar to both journalist and reader." "Reporting," says Braham, is not simply a matter of collecting facts."


Facts do not exist on their own but are located within wide-ranging sets of assumptions, and which facts are thought to be relevant to a story depends on which sets of assumptions are held. These sets of assumptions are referred to as "news frameworks."


What the news writer assumes about the story and the criteria which make the story fit into a particular category will determine the frame for the story. For example, the fact that for commercial television a story must be "packaged" to sell is one consideration. There are many, however, such as: How should a particular story be told? How will this frame be treated by competing commercial media? How does management want the story framed? How do politicians treat this story? Framing news stories, therefore, is an essential tool that all journalists must use to function as professionals.


In other words, what they are doing, as they must, is to present the news which is unfamiliar by virtue of just having happened-in as familiar and easily digestible a fashion as possible.

The development of the formula for American television news

American commercial television news was not always the professional sensation we know today. In the early years of broadcasting, news was not even considered adaptable to the 17-inch, black and white screen. Although some news, which may not even be defined as news by today's audiences, was read as hardcopy to the camera by a "talking head," just as in radio days before there were cameras. Television stations presented news documentaries which told a story to the audience, a style which was reminiscent of the familiar movie newsreels of the 1930s and 1940s. Real change in commercial television news did not occur until the 1960s. CBS news deserves much of the credit for changing the discourse style of the evening news when, in 1962, The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, a half-hour program, replaced Douglas Edwards' rather stodgy fifteen minutes with what was to become America's most popular television news show.

CBS and Cronkite had created a new style in television discourse which was later described as a "revolution in news." The new style resulted in part from realization by CBS executives that "those who reported the news were becoming as important to the audience as the news itself." Thereafter, audiences for television news in America grew rapidly and sponsors were charmed with the modernization of the newscasts.

Essentially, the changes initiated by CBS in the 1960s modified the typical American commercial news broadcast so that it more closely resembled a commercial. In fact, by the end of the decade, all programming on commercial television seemed to borrow the tempo and, what Erik Barnouw has called, the "kaleidoscopic barrages of information and persuasion" found in commercials. Barnouw mentioned Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In as actually being the first television program to affect, as he called it, a "fragmented style involving innumerable short blackouts, often resembling clusters of commercials." Such fast-paced techniques in videotape editing made quite a contrast with the leisurely tempo of most earlier television programs.

Broadcast television news, freed of its radio-days style of discourse, became the stock and goods of the market; and it was produced in accordance with the recommendations of market researchers and news consultants. Media critics and scholars, therefore, had little difficulty in criticizing the new format as being too standardized, "superfluous to good journalism" or even examples of "anti-journalistic brazenness."

The following is a summary of instructions which are intended for creating the template used in this new breed of news. This summary was prepared by a leading news consultancy firm, one which has been described as "the philosophical fountainhead for much of American telecommunications":

Employ a slogan emphasizing friendliness and warmth.


Promotions of the newscast should emphasize the advantages of this particular station and news report-what is special about it?


Use voice-over credits for promotion preceding newscasts, including at least one headline and standard. Develop a production opening for the newscast.


Headlines should be announced at the top of the show and presented by the personality involved. Audio emphasis should be used in open. The set should allow personalities to be shown sitting together. The lead anchorman should introduce himself at the top of the show and develop a spontaneous, team atmosphere through conversational interchange, at the head of the show and in transitions.


Use a participation format instead of sponsored reports. Tease upcoming stories before the commercial break and use bumper slides before commercials.


More stories should be covered during the time allotted for the newscast; a number of stories should be shortened. Use field reporters as extensively as possible. Do not use serialized mini-documentaries. Minority group stories should be presented by a member of a minority group.


Initiate Action Reporter stories, Consumer Protection stories, and environmental features once a week for one minute. Utilize brief stories on new and unusual products.


News analysis and editorials should be presented on a regular basis, but each should be limited to less than 60 seconds in length. The analyst and editorialist must be someone other than the newscaster.


Use a "Kicker" at the conclusion of the newscast, followed by audio emphasis and a production close.

Using the new template, news anchors are trained to "develop a spontaneous, team atmosphere through conversational interchange" for the purposes of promoting, through the adept use of various discourse cues, "feelings of both awe and intimacy" in their audiences. In this way, the television anchor becomes a "personality," "someone the viewer knew, trusted, liked, believed."

The Vietnam war, America's first "television war," offers a good example of this adept use of discourse cues to produce emotions of "intimacy" (achieved by what Fowler refers to as "cueing"). As a result of CBS's new style of discourse, combined with the excitement of the war in Vietnam, Walter Cronkite became the "most trusted man in America." Cronkite's eight minutes on camera every weekday night to an average audience of almost ten million was so good that it was referred to by his producers as "the magic." Walter Cronkite himself was quoted as saying:

Your anchorperson is the most intimate contact you have with your community. ...That slightly tousled codger is going to exude more authority and reliability and believability and integrity from the nail on the little finger of his left hand than that pompadoured, pampered announcer is ever going to muster. And isn't that really what our news departments are all about, isn't that really what you want to sell: authority, believability, credibility, integrity?

The Persian Gulf War: Behind the frames

There is no denying that many differing points of view exist about the Persian Gulf War, especially when it comes to the way in which the western news media presented that war to their audiences. For example, the right-wing "Victory Committee," a coalition of "pro-American" organizations, including "Accuracy in Media," launched a campaign against CNN's star reporter in Bagdad, Peter Arnett, was accused of falsely representing the situation as it really was in Iraq. Arnett, closer to the suffering of the people in Bagdad, issued reports which were of a more independent nature than most of the news media. His stories also differed from the acceptable guidelines laid down by the Pentagon. In keeping with American tradition, the "Victory Committee" wasted no time in demanding Arnett's dismissal from CNN.

Other dissenting points of view, and not necessarily from the left, have been voiced by those who, like Arnett, were in Iraq during the bombing and thus eyewitness to the attacks. A number of such eye-witnesses to the allied attacks have had the courage to offer their testimony before a 22-member International War Crimes Tribunal, held on February 29, 1992, in Martin Luther King, Jr. Auditorium in New York City, before an audience of 1,500 people. The following report is taken from the records of that tribunal, which includes only a small portion of a large body of evidence which was presented to the tribunal's panel, made up of distinguished representatives from five continents. Among those giving testimony was Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States. The tribunal's findings were subsequently presented to the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. A documentary film has since been produced.

In addition to Ramsey Clark's testimony, another witness, Paul Roberts, an award-winning BBC documentary filmmaker and Oxford professor, testified about his experiences during the war. Roberts was the only western writer to travel in Iraq during the war. He also covered the American invasion of Cambodia in early 1970. According to Roberts,

The carpet bombing in Iraq was worse than in Cambodia. The bomb blasts hit me in the chest and knocked the wind out of me. The bombing of Cambodia, by comparison, was a war on a human scale. ...What I saw in Iraq was a massacre, carried out by a technical juggernaut. These people had no chance of protecting themselves or of defending themselves.

Roberts also reported widespread destruction of civilian facilities-schools, and entire suburbs flattened by B-52 carpet bombing. Nonmilitary facilities were consistently destroyed, including aqueducts, markets and telephone exchanges. During his stay in Iraq, Roberts survived three waves of bombing in the area of Bagdad. He described a child he had seen with its stomach ripped open and another who had lost a leg from the bombing. Roberts came forward to testify at the Tribunal because he was seriously perturbed with the contradiction between the media frame of "bloodless surgical strikes" and what he actually saw on the ground. "When I reached Istanbul and watched CNN," said Roberts, "I saw that what was being presented was not what was going on at all."

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark submitted the most complete and by far the most impressive report to the Tribunal and the International Court of Justice. According to Clark's observations,

In the first hours of the aerial and missile bombardment, the United States destroyed most military communications and began the systematic killing of soldiers who were incapable of defense or escape and the destruction of military equipment. Over a period of 42 days, U.S. bombing killed tens of thousands of defenseless soldiers, cut off most of their food, water and other supplies and left them in desperate and helpless disarray.

Clark's testimony, at first, seems to conform to CNN's reporting. Soldiers in a war are after all the first to be hurt. The astounding numbers of dead, figures acquired from the US government and quoted by Clark, however, arouse our attention:

Without significant risk to its own personnel, the U.S. led in the killing of at least 100,000 Iraqi soldiers at a cost of fewer than 120 U.S. combat casualties, according to the US government. When it was determined that the civilian economy and the military were sufficiently destroyed, the US ground forces moved into Kuwait and Iraq attacking disoriented, disorganized, fleeing Iraqi forces wherever they could be found killing thousands more and destroying any equipment found.

As Clark's testimony continues and becomes more detailed, one cannot help but wonder about the discrepancy between Clark's story and those many stories reported by CNN:

The slaughter continued after the cease fire. For example, on March 2, the US 24th Division forces engaged in a four-hour assault against Iraqis just west of Basra. More than 750 vehicles were destroyed, thousands killed without US casualties. A US Commander said we really waxed them. It was called a "turkey Shoot." One Apache helicopter crew member yelled "Say hello to Allah" as he launched a laser guided Hellfire missile.

Surprisingly, much of the information reported to the New York Tribunal by Clark comes from official US government sources, which is CNN's main source as well:

General Thomas Kelly commented on February 23 that by the time the ground war begins "there won't be many of them left." General Norman Schwarzkopf placed Iraqi military casualties at over 100,000. The intention was to destroy all military facilities and equipment wherever located and to so decimate the military age male population so that Iraq could not raise a substantial force for half a generation.

Official American government sources do not, however, tell all, nor do they mention the international treaties and conventions which were violated in fighting the war.

Clark points out in his testimony that the conduct violated the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter and the laws of armed conflict. Among the known illegal weapons and illegal uses of weapons employed by the United States are the following:

-fuel air explosives capable of wide spread incineration and death, napalm cluster and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs.

-"superbombs," 2½ ton devices, intended for assassination of government leaders

The US government did not readily make it known that the United States used fuel air explosives and other similarly destructive "anti-personnel" weapons on its enemies. Apparently, fleeing civilians were included as targets in this war, and not all were enemies of the United States.

One seven mile stretch called the "Highway of Death" was littered with hundreds of vehicles and thousands of dead. All were fleeing to Iraq for their lives. Thousands were civilians of all ages, including Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Jordanians and other nationalities.

"The press," said Clark, "reported no survivors are known or likely." Not all of the civilian suffering was due to direct attacks, however. "The destruction of civilian facilities left the entire civilian population without heat, cooking fuel, refrigeration... and caused hospitals and medical services to shut down." Still, civilian targets were not purposely avoided by the US and its allies, as the press and US government suggested, but, in some cases, said Clark, deliberately targeted "bedouin camps. ...the aerial assault destroyed 10-20,000 homes, apartments and other dwellings." And, "scores of schools, hospitals, mosques and churches were damaged, or destroyed. Civilians died in the war, as Clark testified, as a result of the bombing of facilities essential to civilian life... The Red Crescent Society of Jordan estimated 113,000 civilian dead, 60% children, the week before the end of the war.

According to Clark, a lawyer, "The conduct violated the UN. Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Charter and he laws of armed conflict." The lack of legality of the war, however, does not seem to be the main issue. For Clark, the main issue seems to be the "deliberate indifference to civilian and military casualties in Iraq" expressed by the US military and the media. This was "exemplified" by General Colin Powell's response to a press inquiry about the number of dead from the bombing and ground assaults: "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in." Such conduct, said Clark, violates Protocol I additional, Article 51.4 to the Geneva Convention of 1977.

Framing news about the Persian Gulf War

In order to fill the gap between eyewitness accounts of the Persian Gulf War and CNN's own account, it is useful to analyze, in a cross-cultural setting, CNN's reports which were broadcast throughout the world before and during hostilities. This particular broadcast from CNN International was recorded in January of 1991, just as hostilities were beginning to break out in the Persian Gulf. Presented here for review is a transcript which deals specifically with the impending ground war between the United States, its allies, and Iraq-a ground war which in fact never materialized. The story, quite vividly, illustrates the way in which frames are created.

Since the cessation of hostilities in the Gulf, many critics have made this particular war and the way the war was reported by the major news media a topic of international debate. There are, of course, many versions of the Gulf War besides those submitted by CNN and Ramsey Clark, which are available for analysis, and many other informed observers have offered their opinions of the events in the Middle East as well. All western news media have sustained a surprising amount of criticism since the war, as mentioned earlier, from such groups as the "Victory Committee." Consumer rights critic Ralph Nader, for example, had scathing comments to make about media coverage of the war. Nader has observed that the January 26 demonstration against the Gulf War "was probably the biggest citizen demonstration...in winter. CBS gives them a four-second...scan..."

The reasons for a great deal of the criticism lie simply in the fact that our "democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth." The media claim that news is unbiased, professional and objective. When it, in fact, has been "managed." As Herman and Chomsky have pointed out, when "the premises of discourse" have been fixed "to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about," the news comes in odds with the principle of democratic society-and reality itself.

James Winter, from the University of Windsor, has extensively researched the American media's coverage of anti-war demonstrations during the Gulf War and offers his chilling conclusion: Media coverage of the anti-war movement at home was only "negligible." By February 1, 1991, says Winter, "there were more than 3200 events against the war." Negligence, however, wasn't the only frame used by reporters when covering the war story at home. Winter observes that other frames were clamped on Gulf war stories, such as the dehumanizing-the-enemy frame, or the terrorist-threat frame and, of course, the over-estimating-the-Iraqi-war-machine frame (used commonly to legitimate claims that "war was the Final Resort after failed diplomacy"). Even worse, television audiences "were subjected to a glut of infotainment which totally obscured the real picture." Part of this "glut of infotainment," says Winter, consisted of the technical-display frame which is a popularly consistent and recurring frame found in most reports on the military. Media talk about "surgical strikes," says Winter, kept the public "riveted to technical displays of the laser-guided wizardry of the Cruise and Patriot missiles." The frame associated with Cruise missiles, thanks to the peace movement of the 1980s, had become a somewhat less than persuasive issue, that of defender of Europe against the "Evil Empire," as Reagan referred to the Soviet Union. Now that President Bush had announced the end of the "post-Vietnam war syndrome" the framing of previously negative weapons could be changed, or so it seemed. As one reporter on television noted, "Soon we'll have to stop the air war and start killing human beings."

In addition to the "technical-display" and infotainment frames used in the media during the Gulf war, there were also the various versions of the they-brought-it-on-themselves frames, which, says Winter, were consistently used during the Vietnam war, where, we were told, hamlets were systematically "pacified." In Iraq, the "they-brought-it-on-themselves" frame took the following form: When one of the intended targets turned out to be a bomb shelter, hundreds of civilians were killed by the "smart" weaponry. US. military spokesmen responded that it was Saddam Hussein's fault "for nefariously duping civilians into hiding in military targets"!

The News from the Gulf from Washington

Let us now turn to some specific examples of framing the War in the Gulf. In the following report from CNN (transcribed below) the frames are revealed graphically to audiences on the screen, even before the actual news story begins.

It almost seems that this particular story is presented to demonstrate the correctness of the American government's insistence that peace is not possible with Iraq. The only "peacemakers" around, so it appears, are King Hussein and Prince Hasad of Jordan. Their reasons for wanting peace, CNN's report insists, are loaded with blunders and oversights and misunderstood conceptions about Saddam Hussein. The Jordanians, so goes the frame, are practically held hostage by Palestinian terrorists or their supporters, who reside within Jordan's borders. The only other peacemakers (who are only petty players and-we are led to believe-not to be trusted) are the women shown by CNN demonstrating on behalf of "all Arabs" while carrying pictures of Saddam Hussein himself.

CNN's presentation of the "American side" of this story consisted of an impressive action-packed two minutes and thirty seconds of interviews with "experts," exquisitely timed battlefield scenes from archive tapes and films which were masterfully cut to coincide, scene by scene and word by word with the rhythm of the reporter's, Gene Randall's, voice-over. Although this artful style of presentation is typical of CNN's reporting in general, it also serves as a good example of the professional levels of excellence which CNN maintains. It is this level of professionality which European public-service television news must reach in order to rival CNN.

Reading through a transcript, as we must, without the music, without the movement and rhythm, and without the emotional images of war, makes it more difficult to take for granted the many emotions which surround these frames as they are presented on CNN. The music, the movement, the rhythm and emotional images, when present, deceive and veil the intricacies of the implicitly coded messages being conveyed. In order to reveal these messages, let us attempt to tell CNN's story in a written style, one which Postman might call, "typographical." According to Postman, "To be rationally considered, any claim-commercial or otherwise-must be made in language...it must take the form of a proposition, for that is the universe of discourse from which such words as "true" and "false" come." The style of commercial television veils that "proposition" with music, filmclips from other wars, pace and voice-overs. CNN's coverage of the Persian Gulf War, therefore, must discard Postman's traditional "universe of discourse." Instead, "By substituting images for claims," CNN makes "emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of its argument. "...The truth or falsity of ...[a] claim is simply not an issue.

Summarizing CNN's frames typographically

[Note: In the actual broadcast, "natural sound" is used during the voice-overs. The two "experts," hired by CNN,

Blackwell and Sakharov, were left to speak without any interruption whatsoever. While viewing the film, it is, at times, difficult to identify exactly which side, the American or the Iraqi, is being depicted by CNN with its archived shots. True, the film depicting the Iraqi side was older and grainier, which gives the audience a clue, particularly since the voice-over hinted at the existence of an Iraqi-Iranian war some years earlier.

Although the story was about the Persian Gulf, some of the archived film dealt with the Soviet military, as well, and likely originated with the Soviet army. Obviously, this signals that Iraq is, in many ways, similar to the Soviet Union in its objectives. At regular intervals (three, altogether within this segment) the warning, "Cleared by US. Military," is flashed onto the bottom of the screen. The message seems to pop up at times when, curiously, the film actually needs no special military clearance, such as during the interview with "Soviet defector" Sakharov, or during the older archived film shots of the Iraqis fighting in the desert against Iran. Only in its first appearance on the screen, in which scenes were shown of American troops training in some desert, could one imagine a need for direct censorship. One does tend to wonder whether the US military really looked at these old archive shots and, of course, was there really any need to clear shots filmed in the Soviet Union and in Iraq eight years earlier? Or, even, shots of American troops training in some desert? One does, of course, suspect that it did lend to the feeling that CNN was actively "on the spot," running to the censor's office in time for a deadline in order to have it "on the air" as quickly as possible.]

David French, reporting to his television audience from CNN's studios in Washington, DC., informs the audience that "many people" believe that it is only a matter of time before the US. and its allies begin a ground war with Iraq. CNN then switches to archived footage of the Iraqi military, the Soviet Military and the American military, presented as a voice-over from reporter Gene Randall, who is not in the Gulf, but in Washington.

[Note: If one takes the time to look in more detail at the arguments submitted by CNN's reporter, Randall, in collaboration with his two experts, Blackwell and Sakharov, it is astounding to note that that particular segment included over 25 different action-packed scenes demonstrating military might which added greatly to the credibility of the experts' points of view. And even more astounding is the fact that their "testimonies" took up a total broadcast time of only two minutes and 30 seconds.]

Randall warns the audience that a ground war with Iraq means that the United States will have to fight against a "formidable, well armed, well dug-in, enemy force." This is a result of the fact, says Randall, that Saddam Hussein, when it comes to warfare, believes in "sheer numbers." Even if the US. kills "545,000 Iraqis on the ground," a serious problem with the Iraqi army will still remain on the land.

[Note: The first expert called by Randall to testify is James Blackwell. Although there is no mention of his affiliations, a quick check in the library reveals that Blackwell is a member of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University. Blackwell is also a "retired" Major in the US Army, and he was director in 1989 of the Center's project on "Deterrence in Decay: the Future of the US Defense Industrial Base." Later, in 1990, he served as director for the Center's "Conventional Combat 2002 Project." In 1992 Blackwell was director of the "Project on Congressional Oversight of Defense." Blackwell took part in the Georgetown University's Strategic and International Studies Center's 1991 "Study Group on Lessons Learned from the Gulf War." In 1991, shortly after this interview, Blackwell published a popular book, Thunder in the Desert: The Strategy and Tactics of the Persian Gulf War (New York: Bantam Books), 1991.]

Blackwell, subtitled on the screen as "military analyst," engaged by CNN to talk in their Washington studios, gives support to Randall's warning: The United States, says Blackwell, would have to "eliminate half of their armory" if a ground war with Iraq does, in fact, materialize. The reason is obvious: The Iraqis are using "mass" as a "central part of their defensive strategy."

There is, unfortunately, more to Saddam's threat to the "coalition" forces, says Randall in a voice-over: There is also a "deadly combination," a "lethal mix" of former "Soviet military doctrine" and "battlefield flexibility" which Iraq learned "painfully" in its "bloody" eight-year war with Iran. To verify Randall's observations about the Soviet-military-doctrine threat, CNN consults "Soviet defector" Vladimir Sakharov, now a "military analyst," who tells CNN's audience that, in addition to the "Soviet military doctrine" of "massive military force," Iraq is conducting a "Holy War" and will use "martyrdom" as a weapon against the United States and its allies.

[Note: CNN's second expert, also speaking from Washington, is "Soviet defector Vladimir Sakharov," a "one-time military attaché," as Randall calls him, for the Soviet Union in Iraq. Like Blackwell, Sakharov has also written a book, (not mentioned by CNN), in collaboration with the ghost writer Umberto Tosi, entitled High Treason (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980), about his experiences with Soviet intelligence and the C.I.A.]

These factors--the Holy War and the massing of artillery--Sakharov warns, add an "extra dangerous" element to the war. Sakharov, Randall points out in a voice-over, also mentions Iraq's other strategy, that which was "borrowed" from the former Soviet Union, which is, namely, the act of not committing the air force to an early engagement with US. forces for the purpose of saving "military resources" for the battlefield. (Iraq, at the time, was not seen to be very actively pursuing the air war, which, according to Sakharov, was another Soviet strategy.)

James Blackwell agrees with Sakharov and reminds the audience that one thing which most concerned the United States in Europe, "in terms of Soviet doctrine," was their use of "massed artillery." "The Iraqis," says Blackwell, "have done them [the Soviets] three times better...because they've taken Soviet doctrine and multiplied it."

Sakharov again draws our attention to Iraq's "Holy War," and warns that Iraq has been "hardened by the war with Iran," and in that "Holy War" Iraq has "seen blood." As a consequence, Iraqi soldiers are now "used to seeing blood," and they have become, for that reason, as an enemy of the United States, even more formidable than before.

Randall points again to "Soviet defector" Sakharov's observations that Iraq's use of the military doctrine which belonged to the former Soviet Union, in particular its use of "mass" as a weapon, combined with Iraq's Islamic beliefs in "Holy War," presents Americans with a "unique" kind of enemy.

"Most military analysts," concludes Randall in his wrap-up, "agree that a ground war with Iraq is inevitable, and it will take a heavy toll in American lives."

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Finnish Views of CNN Copyright © 1995 by Brett Dellinger

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BRETT DELLINGER (1995). Finnish views of CNN television news: A critical cross-cultural analysis of the American commercial discourse style. Linguistics 6. (Väitöskirja). 337 s. 136 Finnish Marks.