Negative U.S. media linked to increased insurgent attacks

Negative U.S. media linked to increased insurgent attacks

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable "emboldenment effect" on insurgents there. Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university's Kennedy School of Government. The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq." The researchers studied data about insurgent attacks and U.S. media coverage up to November, tracking what they called "anti-resolve statements" by U.S. politicians and reports about American public opinion on the war. "We find that in periods immediately after a spike in anti-resolve statements, the level of insurgent attacks increases," says the study, published earlier this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a leading U.S. nonprofit economic research organization. In Iraqi provinces that were broadly comparable in social and economic terms, attacks increased between 7 percent and 10 percent following what the researchers call "high-mention weeks," like the two just before the November 2006 election. Erica Chenoweth, a postdoctoral research fellow studying terrorism and insurgency at the Belfer Center and a specialist in the statistical analysis of violent events who has read the study, told UPI that it was "a good one."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/...259963993/1003

That IS admittedly one of the downsides of a free press, but they should not be censored regardless.

What? What? What? They think us talking negatively about our country fuels insurgents? What?

Our ridicule of the governing powers is basically the same reaction the attackers have.

They just use bombs instead of words.

It isn't us who are making the insurgent attacks increase, it's the government. If both the people under it's control and under it's iron rod object, it is clear that the actions of said power are wrong.

The root is not the product, but the producer. America itself can make more than one party angry with its actions.

It shows them that we are not united in defeating them, makes us look weak, regardless of the iraq war.

It shows them that we are not united in defeating them, makes us look weak, regardless of the iraq war.

If most of the country is opposed to the occupation, we shouldn't be there regardless. Why should the majority feign support?