Study Of The Heterogeneity Of News Report Between China And US Duirng The Iraq War

Napoleon used to said," Three unfriendly newspaper have are more powerfulthan a thousand bayonets." Mass media play an important role in the Iraqi war. Duringthe period of warfare, government and military tend to disseminate tendentiousinformation to guide the public opinion and increase the social morale. This studypresents an empirical study using one of the most influential war in recent years, Iraqwar, as an example to compare the difference between US and China media reports toanalyze how public medias in these two countries are influenced by their governmentsand to explain the relationship between the government, the report tendency and theaudience.The study starts from analyzing the features of US news reports during the Iraqwar. During the last half century, the number of warfare, either launched orparticipated by US, is significantly higher than other countries, therefore the USgovernment demonstrated high maturity in both news report experience and technicalsupport system. Contrarily, Chinese government exposed the problem of lackingexperience of war report. However since Iraq war report is the first live battle reportconducted by the Chinese government, hence Chinese government revealed manygroundbreaking features during the Iraq war.Then the paper conducted communication analysis regarding the contents ofbattle reports from the two countries during the war to investigate how US and Chinaguide the public opinion through media. First of all, the official media in bothcountries set the agenda to audience to serve their propaganda purpose. The Chinesegovernment set “maintain peace, against war” topic while the US government set“Anti-terrorism and encourage Patriotism” topic. Secondly, both China and USmedia created a virtual environment to separate the audience away from the war inorder to protect the national interest. Also during the war, both countries implementedstrict media control and played role of gatekeeper regarding the new content.However the adjustment of news content is different for these two countries. Relying on the rich experience of war, US government utilized opinion-leader to encouragethe audience and guide the media into favorable direction.Finally, the study concluded that the difference in Iraq war report between USand China roots from ideological differences between the two countries. Differentideologies will affect the function of public media. Chinese main stream medias arethe propaganda agent of the government which precisely broadcasts the government’sattitude and claim. The public media in US has the supervision functionality duringthe era of peace, however due to the impact of public concern and national interest,the nature of public media also changes during the war time.