Dana Roberson (B.A. 1987) and a lead producer Mary Mapes for “60 Minutes II” had an explosive story for CBS last spring. Photos had surfaced which revealed American military police forcing captive Iraqi men into humiliating poses at Abu Ghraib prison. When the Defense Department officials requested the network delay showing the photos and stories for two weeks, CBS complied.
The Abu Ghraib photos were anonymously sent to Roberson’s e-mail almost three months after she had heard they existed. Roberson and Mapes traveled to Kuwait to conduct numerous interviews and do a great deal of research. Once they authenticated the photos, the story had finally progressed enough for CBS to be ready to air the story, which turned the months-old accusations into a front-page reality. The U.S. military needed time to compile a response to the fiasco.
Associate Professor Steve Berry feels as though the government upset what Richard Hanley, director of journalism and e-media at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, refers to as “the natural tempo and rhythm” of the news process by asking CBS to delay the airing of the show first by one week and then two.
“CBS was worried that airing the photos would bring about retaliation against the hostages under the control of insurgents and inflame insurgency more,” said Berry. “Arguments would continue to exist for an indefinite period of time. Hostages’ lives would be in danger until the war ended. So when would it ever be safe to run the photos?”
Roberson believes that the government, businesses and the entertainment industry have press agents and other publicity representatives that attempt to manipulate what goes on the air and when it is released until they can run it by their colleagues for official responses.
“As reasonable journalists we realize that and choose whether or not to go ahead with a story. In the case of Abu Ghraib, the delay allowed us to get some very important additional information that was not in the original segment,” said Roberson. “I was initially reluctant about the delay, but it gave me more time to make sure it was the most powerful and thorough segment it could be.”
The interruption of the news flow is not new.
“The rhythm and flow is a built-in safeguard for the press against manipulation of news by the government,” said Berry.
When CBS allowed the government to influence their choice on when the story was aired, they had the potential to influence how other news outlets would possibly respond to the same pressure, balancing the publics’ rights to communication with the outcome of releasing a story.
Roberson responds to this pressure and balancing with her knowledge of where to draw the line between right and wrong.
“If a journalist sees something that is wrong they do what they can to expose that wrong,” said Roberson. “You try to get both sides of any story and it’s very difficult to tell an explosive story without a response.”
As for stalling a story due to government concern about the outcome, or simply compiling a response, Roberson feels that either way, they have their reasons that were, in this case, for the defense of our military.
“If they feel that if it [a story] puts people’s lives in danger, they certainly will relay that information. But ultimately the story will either air or be written because the story, after all, is to put the truth out there regardless of the backlash,” said Roberson.
Even though the story was eventually aired, Berry disagrees with the decision that CBS made to comply with the request to delay the release for two full weeks.
“The process of rhythm and flow is that a reporter gets a tip, they investigate the tip and uncover the facts, write and edit the story and then publish and broadcast the story,” said Berry. “You don’t mess with the rhythm and flow unless there are extraordinary circumstances. There weren’t extraordinary circumstances in Abu Ghraib.”
Berry feels that during the two week delay the government was granted, a lot of other important events could have occurred, taking away from the initial level of importance that the story possessed.
“The government had time to develop a detailed response,” said Berry. “They probably conducted focus groups in order to attempt to predict how the public would respond to the story.”
Roberson thinks that the government used those two weeks to develop a detailed response, which did not entail focus groups, but rather meetings to discuss how the public might respond.
She believes that a lot had to be thought out concerning reactions. Time was needed to decide who would speak regarding the responses, and what they would say.
“I feel like they were caught totally off guard. It was a very intense time in the war, they knew that the incidents had occurred but I think they thought they had been able to contain the story,” said Roberson. “We didn’t let them know we had the photos and were going to air them until we were only a few days away from doing it. They knew how explosive a story it was going to be and I think they needed time to figure out how to react, internally and externally.”
To Roberson’s knowledge, no direct violence in retaliation to the story existed. There was also no immediate inflammation that occurred as a result of the release of the story. Simply put, the international reaction to the story was mostly limited to a vocal level.
Berry feels that we will never know for sure whether there was any apparent harm from the delay of the broadcast of the Abu Ghraib story. No matter what, Berry holds strong to his beliefs that “once it’s news, it belongs to the public and becomes the property of the public … not the press.”
