From the Crimean War of 1853 to Russia's war inUkraine, journalists, reporters, and the media have shaped the public's understanding of war. But do the stories we read and the photos we see provide an impartial picture of the wars they document? As the Institute for Global Affairs' Mark Hannah explained in his 2022 Foreign Policy piece, certain aspects of American war coverage—reliance on government sources and incentives to simplify geopolitics as battles between good and evil—have long compelled news organizations to tilt toward military action.
In this archival episode of None Of The Above, host of WNYC's On The Media Brooke Gladstone and Slate's "War Stories" columnist Fred Kaplan, are interviewed by Mark at the American Academy in Rome. Together, in these excerpts from that conversation, they unpack the media's coverage of the Russia-Ukraine War and the biases which influence how the media understand and depict these conflicts.