What's in a name? More than you think.

• Author: Saltzman, Joe
• Position: Words & Images - Editorial

TELEVISION COVERAGE of the Iraqi war and postwar illustrates once again how American television news is obsessed with show business terminology that at the very least is poor journalism and at its worst corrupts and ignores a basic rule of journalism: fairness and accuracy in all reporting.

With the government's public relations arm pushing hard, phrases to describe the war and postwar stories moved from a fair account of what was going on to an oppressive vocabulary that gave a spin to the coverage. Colorful phrases, sometimes patriotic, sometimes just plain wrong, gave much of the TV news coverage a convenient anti-Iraqi/pro-American stance. Some examples:

"Operation Iraqi Freedom" was used constantly by Fox and MSNBC as a banner for summing up the coverage of the war in the Middle East. Few would dispute that "Operation Iraqi Freedom" sounded noble and gave a heroic and honorable reason for going to war as opposed to the accurate and more evenhanded "The War in Iraq" of "The Iraqi Conflict." Fighting for a country's freedom brings images of the American and French revolutions, of World War II soldiers fighting against Hitler and the Japanese, and of friendly, grateful citizens waving American flags to greet soldiers who had liberated their country. These images neatly fit with a title like "Operation Iraqi Freedom." "The War in Iraq" conjures up destruction and death. It is one thing for the Administration to use favorable phrases to win support for its policies, quite another for the American media to use such phrases in trying to describe what is going on in a Middle East war.

"Coalition forces" sounds as if a worldwide coalition of military force is being used to fight the war. It's certainly the Bush-approved term for the American and British forces fighting in Iraq. News organizations, however, shouldn't use phrases that do not adequately describe the situation. It was American soldiers in Baghdad, not coalition forces, but most of the news media used the phrase "coalition forces" throughout the coverage of the war.

Going into a foreign country to get rid of "weapons of mass destruction" makes sense. As Time magazine put it, "they sound so much more fearsome than chemical or biological weapons. A few papers, like The New York Times, have been careful to use 'unconventional weapons' or other terms instead."

If you were trying to figure out whether the war in Iraq was justified, see which sentence would convince you: "Operation Iraqi...