by Professor Justin Lewis

The recent furore about the BBC's coverage of the war in Iraq has generated rather more heat than light. But behind the government's attack on the BBC lies the serious accusation that the corporation's coverage of the conflict was anti-war. This claim goes much further than the much-publicised attack on Andrew Gilligan -- the BBC's critics in the government have clearly implied that Gilligan's stories are part of a more systematic, institutional bias.

So, is it true? The answer has little to do with the work of individual reporters -- we know from previous research that people are influenced by the general weight of TV coverage rather than by particular reports. For this reason, we have conducted a more comprehensive survey of the way the four main UK broadcasters -- the BBC, ITN, Channel 4 and Sky -- covered the war. After careful analysis of all the main evening news bulletins during the war, we have been able to build up a fairly clear picture of the coverage on the different channels.

Matthew d'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph described how "in the eyes of exasperated Blairites -- the BBC whinged and whined, and did its best to sabotage the war effort". But the pattern that emerges from our study is very different. For example, we asked which of the four channels was most likely to use the British government as a source. The answer, it turns out, is the BBC -- where the proportion of government sources was twice that of ITN and Channel 4 News. The BBC was also a little more likely to use British military sources in its coverage than the other three channels.

When it comes to reporting the other side, on the other hand, the BBC was much more cautious. Sky and Channel 4 were both much more likely than the BBC to quote official Iraqi sources. The BBC was also less likely than the other three channels to use independent sources like the Red Cross -- many of whom were critical of the war effort (Channel 4 used such sources three times more often than the BBC, Sky twice as often).

The government's case for war was based partly on the idea that most Iraqi people wanted liberation and hence supported the invasion. So to what extent did TV news portray the Iraqi people as welcoming US and British troops? This turned out to be a dominant theme of the coverage: across the news as a whole, the Iraqi people were around three times more likely to be portrayed as pro-invasion than anti-invasion. How far this represented actual Iraqi public opinion we have no way of verifying, but it fits happily with the government's version of events. This ratio was remarkably consistent across all TV channels -- with the exception of Channel 4, where the ratio was a little less than two to one.

When it came to reporting the Iraqi casualties -- clearly a negative for the government's case -- we found fewer reports on the BBC than on the other three channels. Again, it was Channel 4 which was most likely to offer a critical note -- 44% of its reports about the Iraqi people were about civilian casualties, compared with 30% on Sky, 24% on ITN, and only 22% on the BBC.

The picture that emerges from our data is fairly clear: if there was a TV channel that was more likely to report information damaging to the government's case, it was Channel 4. The BBC, by contrast, was often the channel least likely to engage in "whingeing and whining". So, for example, when Tony Blair accused the Iraqi regime of executing British soldiers -- a story Downing Street was later forced to retract -- the BBC was the only one of the early evening news bulletins that failed to examine the lack of evidence to support it, or to report the rather embarrassing government retraction the next day.

And when it came to the many other stories from military sources that turned out to be false, such as the Basra "uprising" or the launching of Scud missiles into Kuwait, Channel 4 was the only channel -- rightly as it turned out -- to offer a note of scepticism or caution. The BBC, ITN and Sky were, on the whole, much more trusting of US and British military sources.

The only finding that does not quite fit this pattern was, interestingly, the coverage given to weapons of mass destruction.

The government was clearly keen to emphasise the danger posed by Iraq's alleged chemical or biological weapons, so to what extent did broadcasters report speculation hinting at their likely or possible use? While this turned out to be a much smaller theme during the war than we might have expected beforehand, we found that all four channels were much more likely to report speculation that implied Iraq might use such weapons than to cast doubt on their possible use.

But in this case, we found a few more reports on the BBC than elsewhere which allowed doubt to creep in -- whether by reporting that such weapons had not been found or by casting doubt on their possible use. And yet, even here, the BBC was more than three times more likely to suggest that such weapons might be used than to suggest they might not. And, as it turned out, the BBC and the other broadcasters all placed much too much faith in the plausibility of such rumours.

Indeed, far from revealing an anti-war BBC, our findings tend to give credence to those who criticised the BBC for being too sympathetic to the government in its war coverage. Either way, it is clear that the accusation of BBC anti-war bias fails to stand up to any serious or sustained analysis.

The writer is deputy head of Cardiff University's school of journalism

The Guardian, July 4, 2003