When casualties increased, war coverage became more negative
As the number of U.S. casualties rose in Afghanistan, reporters filed more stories about the conflict and those articles grew increasingly negative about both the war effort and the military, according to a Penn State researcher. "When the war in Afghanistan started, the tone of the stories that reporters filed was generally neutral," said Michel Haigh, associate professor of communications. "However, over time, and as casualties increased, the coverage became more negative." In 2003, as the media began to focus more on the conflict in Iraq, reporters wrote less than 20 stories about Afghanistan in the newspapers that Haigh and her assistants analyzed. They examined articles about the war from major newspapers during a 10-year period—from 2001 to 2010. However, between 2009 and 2010, when casualties reached their highest levels, there were more than 450 articles written about the war in Afghanistan.