Jessica Lynch's Role In Journalism

A basic news article must answer six questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. However, this creates the expectation that a news reporter must create a “story” rather than an article, or a narrative that interests the reader. This creates temptation to focus on individual stories rather than the larger issues at hand, or even for reporter to cultivate a narrative from information. Even still, reporters face more challenges in the form of manipulation by sources such as politicians and experts with agendas. In the case of Jessica Lynch, the Iraq War, and today’s news coverage, viewers can see that the media, the military, and politicians all can play a role in distorting reality or creating myth. However, journalism is not doomed to be

Citing defense authorities and US officials, news outlets also began to flesh out the narrative, claiming that Lynch had sustained numerous gun wounds, that Lynch had emptied her weapon in combat, and that Lynch had been stabbed. Reporters such as Dana Priest and Vernon Loeb relied on trusted sources within the Pentagon and the intelligence community and sources such as “Mohammed”, an Iraqi who had visited the hospital where his wife worked as a nurse. However, this reliance on anonymous sources proved disastrous for the press. Because the Pentagon and U.S. military official remained silent on official statements, the press allowed itself to be manipulated by anonymous sources who did not necessarily need to be anonymous in terms of safety. Because the sources were not on the record, they were not accountable for their

Numerous instances show lapses in what journalists consider standard practice. Issues found in the coverage during Iraqi War and the time leading up to it include citing an Iraqi funded by the U.S. and eventually dropped by the CIA as a key source, using sources with close proximity to the U.S. administration, making off-based claims such as Hussein allying with a Kurd, not demanding proof from the government for claims, placing pro-war stories on the front page while placing stories from the opposing side on later pages, denouncing or ignoring democrats, calling dissenting opinions “unpatriotic”, relying too much on officials, and more. Overall, journalists followed the mainstream instead of seeking the truth and making a difference. It appears that most journalists decided that the best way to help their country and its citizens was to support the war effort and to present one-sided information. f propaganda and obvious bias in the news fueled public support for the Iraq War by claiming opinion and unsupported claims as fact and the failure of journalists to question government and groupthink were the most shocking lapses in press coverage of the time.

Unfortunately, “bad” press is not limited to issues and failures as a large as that of the press coverage of the rescue of Jessica Lynch and the the Iraqi War. Journalistic failure can be anywhere where the public is deceived,