A war of words: a linguistic analysis of BBC embed reports during the Iraq conflict.

Correspondents have long accompanied troops into war zones, and the role of embedded reporter quickly became a key figure in media coverage of the Iraq war, not entirely without criticism. Some contentious questions regarding how the war was presented to audiences, and whether reporters’ “voice” and “stance” consciously or unconsciously projected the coalition’s perspective were inevitably raised and the ensuing debate has lasted as long as the conflict. This paper discusses the “embed” reports in the light of the debate and in the context of recent studies of media discourse, in particular those regarding the ideological stance inherent in journalism (see for example Fairclough, 1995, and van Dijk, 1998). The present study (part of an ongoing project analysing media discourse during the war in Iraq) is based on a 25,000 word electronic corpus of reports from BBC journalists “embedded” with coalition forces. Using the methodology of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) (see Haarman et al 2002, Partington 2003) this study brings together a quantitative overview and more detailed qualitative analyses (typical of Discourse Studies) in a study of the subjectivity of the reporter voice, the construction of stance, and the features of language used to negotiate emotions, judgements and Evaluations, making particular reference to the work of White (2003), Martin (2000) and Iedema et al. (1994). Analysis of the corpus shows that the BBC embed reports appear to avoid bias and report opposing viewpoints, maintaining a surface “objectivity” in keeping with Greatbatch’s (1998) notion of reporter neutralism. However, they also project an unmistakeable reporter voice, as opinion-giver, interpreter of, and witness to events, results which are often in stark contrast with some “official” findings, such as the Cardiff Commission Report.