War reporting not all bad news, study finds

Liverpool, UK - 28 September 2010: A new book by social scientists at the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds has praised the way UK newspapers and broadcasters report war and conflict. However, the researchers - who focused mainly on the Iraq war - say more can be done to ensure critics of the Government line are given a voice in the mainstream news media. They single out Channel Four News as being the most likely TV news channel to produce coverage of the Iraq invasion that was largely independent of the official government line. But more generally, the British press continues to display a wide range of coverage which includes a strongly anti-war element, they say. Reports on Iraq war civilian casualties, for example, were one of the areas of coverage that tended to attract critical reporting, even from predominantly pro-war newspapers. Peter Goddard from the University of Liverpool said: "Our findings are particularly interesting in the light of government criticisms of media coverage of Iraq. "Several ministers singled out the BBC as unduly critical of the war and of the government's stance.