Television, Public Opinion and the War in Iraq: The Case of Britain

This article looks at the relationship between television coverage of the Iraq War and changes in British public opinion towards the war. During the war, television coverage helped create a climate in which pro-war positions became more relevant and plausible. This was not the result of crude forms of bias, but the product of news values which privileged certain assumptions and narratives over others. This, in turn, may assist a wider (and questionable) ideological strategy to link the war on terrorism to forms of military action, making both war and military spending more acceptable.