NBC's decision to call the violence in Iraq a "civil war" has launched civil wars within a number of news outlets. But are they ready to challenge Bush Administration?
For months, the media have been torn over use of the term "civil war" to describe the descent into outright murder and torture in Iraq. Apparently the utter chaos and carnage of the past week has finally convinced some to use "civil war" without apology -- with NBC News and MSNBC joining in today in a major way -- but many still hold back, an E&P survey today shows.
The Los Angeles Times was one of the first newspapers to flatly describe the conflict as a "civil war" -- without the usual qualifiers of "approaching" or "near" -- and did again in the first paragraph of a news report on Saturday. The Christian Science Monitor today refers to a "deepening civil war."
But the main Washington Post story today continued to use "sectarian strife." A widely-published Reuters dispatch today adopted "sectarian conflict" and McClatchy in a report from Baghdad relied on "sectarian violence." Other papers declared that Iraq is on the verge of civil war, but has not gotten there yet, with an Associated Press story calling Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's visit to Iran an effort to prevent "Iraq's sectarian violence from sliding into an all-out civil war."
In a bombshell, however, Matt Lauer on the Today show this morning revealed that NBC had studied and perhaps debated the issue anew, and then decided that it will now use "civil war" freely. "For months the White House rejected claims that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated into civil war," he said. "For the most part news organizations like NBC hesitated to characterize it as such. After careful consideration, NBC News has decided the change in terminology is warranted and what is going on in Iraq can now be characterized as civil war."
Source: AlterNet: War on Iraq: Iraq is a Civil War: Media Dominoes Falling
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