War journalists and forces of gatekeeping during the escalation and the de-escalation periods of the Iraq War

Abstract

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, war journalists have reported news from the battlefields and streets of Baghdad to the world audiences. As the violent conflict in Iraq winds down, so do the war reporting operations in Iraq. Based on in-depth interviews with 23 war correspondents, this study investigates gatekeeping forces that affected the journalists’ news coverage of the Iraq War. The study found that the war journalists singled out personal judgment, an individual-level gatekeeping force, to be the most salient element in reporting the escalation period of the Iraq War. However, the journalists responded that financial constraints and deference to audience interest, organizational-level, and social institutional-level gatekeeping forces determined the direction and the volume of the war reporting more saliently during the de-escalation period of the Iraq War.