Photograph by Mahmoud Bali (VOA) – US-backed Forces Press Deeper Into Southern Raqqa City
President Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal of 2,000 U.S. combat troops from Syria is being met with strong criticism from the U.S. military establishment. [1] The attacks on withdrawal are reiterated in U.S. mass media outlets as well. Nowhere is this clearer than in the editorials of the paper of national record – the New York Times. The paper devoted serious attention to the Syrian civil war in 2018, echoing the sustained attention U.S. leaders have devoted toward the conflict. To better understand how this conflict has played out in elite American media discourse, I undertook a systematic analysis of all the New York Times’ editorials that emphasized the Syria question in 2018. [2]
Few political communication scholars are interested in the issue of media propaganda and how it is disseminated in “free” and “democratic” western societies – those that do not rely on official government censorship of the press. [3] The notion that journalists are complicit in reinforcing official narratives and agendas is too radical for most scholars; most prefer limited definitions of propaganda as something that othernations, presses, and leaders do. But my review of the Times’ coverage of Syria suggests that a different type of propaganda is at work compared to the clumsier versions embraced by dictatorial governments and handed down to consumers via state-run media….