Did yellow journalism play role in Iraq war?

Answer 1

I am not sure that "yellow journalism" (scary headlines, totally un-researched reporting intended to terrify the public in support of a political agenda) describes all that went wrong with the war coverage, but many critics believe it did play a part. Of course, it depends on which side you ask, but these days, even some Republicans (Colin Powell, for example) acknowledge that the Bush administration gave erroneous information to the American public. However, harsher critics believe the information was more than erroneous-- many Democrats and some libertarian Republicans, believe the Bush administration intentionally misled and manipulated the public, using friendly media sources (Fox News, conservative Talk Shows) to do so.

A number of liberal and moderate journalists also felt the majority of the media was too lacking in healthy skepticism and too deferential to President Bush and Vice President Cheney: one such critic, Eric Boehlert, wrote a book called "Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush." But it should also be noted that even some generally reliable media outlets that were not known as conservative (the New York Times, for one), bought into the Bush administration's desire to go to war in Iraq, publishing articles that accepted the president and vice president's assertions that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. At that time, there was not yet a blogosphere (Twitter, Facebook), nor were there many vocal critics of the war who were able to get on TV or radio to challenge President Bush's point of view.

Critics would later accuse the president of intentionally exaggerating the threat Saddam posed; there were definitely some friendly (pro-Bush) media that used the scare headlines and exaggerated claims associated with yellow journalism, but as mentioned already, not all of the reporting was intended to scare. In some cases, it was simply what reporters were told and that is what they related to their viewers, listeners, and readers. At that time, critics say, too many in the press did not ask the hard questions, and generally reported the exaggerations and erroneous assertions as if they had a basis in fact. Thus, a case could indeed be made that yellow journalism was one factor in why Americans came to believe false stories, but it was not the entire reason.