Reporting more, informing less A comparison of the Swedish media coverage

The purpose of this study is to examine and compare how leading Swedish news media in television and the press covered and described the terrorist attacks in the USA on September 11 in 2001, the US attacks on Afghanistan later in 2001 and the war in Iraq in 2003. The article examines factors influencing news decisions and media ability to maintain fair news reporting. The study looks specifically at the sources that are used, the occurrence of speculations and whether the coverage was anti-American or anti-Muslim. The central questions are: what were the most frequently used sources?, how frequent were different types of speculation?, and how frequent were anti-American and anti-Muslim rhetorical figures respectively? K E Y W O R D S media logic sources speculations Swedish journalism terrorism war coverage International conflicts of our time are usually not only a battle of weapons but also a battle of opinions. Propaganda plays an important role in portraying the conflict in the most favourable way for each side. The propaganda strategies are most often oriented towards the media arena, as information provided by the media is the main source of information for most citizens today (Bennett and Paletz, 1994; Strömbäck, 2004). Thus, studies of the media coverage of wars and other crises are essential for the understanding of the opinion formation processes as dramatic events occur. Besides that, there are many important questions about how journalists and editors actually work in the outbreak of international conflicts: Are professional standards in reporting achieved? Do the media provide informa-tion that citizens can use to form well-informed opinions? Is the line betwee