Dropping bombs and credibility?

After the first barrage of bombs dropped on Iraq, the media bombarded homes and newsstands with a comparable amount of war coverage. But while reporters have scrambled to beat their competition in delivering the news, they have made mistakes and displayed weaknesses, IU journalism professors said.\nNBC, MSNBC and National Geographic fired veteran journalist Peter Arnett Tuesday after he criticized the effectiveness of U.S. military planning in an interview with an Iraqi news station. Although Arnett's criticism outraged many, journalism professor Amy Reynolds said NBC made a mistake.\n"Being patriotic isn't the role of a journalist," Reynolds said. "Getting the most important information to the public is their job, and that's what (Arnett) has always done."\nAnother journalist to lose his job over an ethical decision was Los Angeles Times photographer Brian Walski after he merged two photographs depicting a British soldier instructing Iraqi civilians to seek protection from Iraqi fire into one photograph.\nMany other publicized ethical dilemmas have dealt with cable TV. Reynolds, a former broadcast journalist for WSEE-TV in Erie, Pa., said the demand on TV journalists to quickly uncover information can lead to mistakes. The Fox News Channel fell victim to that pressure when it and other publications falsely reported the discovery of an Iraqi chemical weapon factory.\n"A lot of the errors have come from the journalists' reliance on government sources for information," Reynolds said. "During war the journalists sometimes don't have the opportunity to obtain the verification they normally would, and that can lead to error."\nThe most significant change in war coverage since the Gulf War in 1991 is the proliferation of embedded journalists, said journalism professor Paul Voakes, a former San Jose Mercury News columnist. Despite the behind-the-scenes perspective, Voakes said reports from war correspondents have been dry and factual. \nEmbedded journalists are able to report graphic footage, leading to ethical slip-ups. Reporting dead soldiers' names and images has become a concern since a Los Angeles mother learned about her son's death from a TV report. Reynolds said immediately reporting the identities of dead soldiers doesn't merit significant news value.\n"There is no reason not to respect privacy and sorrow of the family," she said. "During war there's always this obsession with being the first in getting things live, but the journalists need to take into account trauma of the family members."\nAlthough the media has devoted major attention to the war, journalism professor Randy Beam said too much is not always a good thing.\n"The news coverage so far has been overwhelming, and we've had the chance to observe the events from several different angles, but too much news can have its weaknesses," said Beam, a former reporter for the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal. "With so much information on the war, some of it tends to become a bit repetitious."\nBut Beam said local newspapers' coverage of the war has been solid in portraying how the war has affected the community.\n"The papers have made strong efforts to cover the role that local people have in connection to the war," Beam said. "It's been interesting to read about the people who have relatives in the Middle East and to look at the war from their perspective."\nReynolds said she's been disappointed with the superficial approach of local coverage. \n"A lot of the local coverage has been too event-focused," Reynolds said. "There has been reporting done on some of the protests that have taken place, but the content has been oversimplified, and as a result of that you don't hear the complexity of protesters' message."\nAfter Sept. 11, the media played an important role in assuring the unity of the nation, Voakes said. But now, the news coverage is the opposite.\n"The media no longer has the unity it had after 9/11, when there wasn't any political dissension in the media," Voakes said. "But this time it's been much more divided. There has been a lot of strong conflict about our involvement and interest in this war"