International News Agencies and the War Debate of 2003

Abstract

A stratified random sample of articles about the debate from 29 January 2003, to 18 February 2003, leading up to the US–Iraq conflict was selected from six news agencies – AP, Agence France Presse, Reuters, Xinhua, ITAR-TASS and Inter Press Service. US official sources were cited most frequently by all agencies except IPS and ITAR-TASS, which showed a nationalistic bias in its sourcing. Neither the western news agencies nor Xinhua's sourcing patterns were nationalistic, and their coverage was more balanced than IPS and ITAR-TASS. However, the non-western news agencies presented significantly more non-western viewpoints in their coverage of the pre-war debate.