Alex Jones, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, & Public Policy, says that several major factors have changed, making it considerably more difficult for the White House to convince the public of the need for a war with Iran.

“I think there are three particular groups that are extremely skeptical,” he says. “The first is the media itself.” He gives the second as “the Democratic Party and the Congress,” but “the real joker in the deck is the clear unhappiness of the military.” (In recent days, a number of retired generals have taken the extraordinary step of going public with their misgivings about the competence of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.)

If journalists are only as good as their sources, as Jones notes, this time they may not be hamstrung by the lack of vocal, organized opposition in Washington that defined the political environment in the days before the invasion of Iraq.

One other element likely to embolden the media is the president’s political weakness. A batch of new polls show his Iraq-policy approval numbers languishing in the 30s — a big factor in driving his overall job-approval ratings to new lows. “The different mood is that people don’t believe the president anymore,” says Christenson. “That’s the dynamic that has changed.”

None of this, however, means that more skeptical coverage will present an insurmountable obstacle to a march toward conflict with Iran by an administration that has displayed a proclivity to marginalize the press and an unwillingness to acknowledge weakness or errors.

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For one thing, such loyal and influential Bush media allies as talk radio, the Fox News Channel, and conservative (particularly neoconservative) periodicals can be counted on to make the case for war, if necessary. Writing in the April 24 Weekly Standard, William Kristol mentioned the situation with Iran in the same breath as Hitler’s Germany, before counseling “serious preparation for possible military action.”

And if war fever really takes hold, the news industry will quickly shift from the task of examining the justification for that policy to focusing on the daunting logistics of how to cover the impending carnage.

Danny Schechter, who, in his 2004 documentary WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception, attacked TV news for treating the war in Iraq as a ratings and revenue windfall, remains unconvinced that things have changed all that much in three years.

“Iran is easily demonized, [and] it seems the Fox Newses of the world are still framing the issue,” he says. “I don’t feel the media coverage is any better.”

On the Web
Mark Jurkowitz's Media Log: //www.thephoenix.com/medialog/
Military Reporters and Editors: //www.militaryreporters.org/