ABSTRACT
After September 2002, when US President George W. Bush told a UN General Assembly session to confront the “grave and gathering danger” of Iraq or stand aside as the United States acted, it became clear that preparations were being made to declare war at any moment. When the first US missiles hit targets in Baghdad on March 20, 2003 and the war started, followed by US and British ground troops entering Iraq, 1 the news war that had started long before became an actual war. World opinion was divided: several countries, including France, Germany, and Russia, condemned the war. People voted with their feet: millions of people all over the world marched against the war. In conflict situations where world public opinion is divided, news becomes even more important than usual. The question “whose news?” is suddenly raised loudly again. As Lewis et al. (2003) note, what made the war in Iraq different from other wars was the scale of the exercise, the changes in technology which made live or near-live television war reporting from the battlefield possible for the first time, and also, perhaps, the level of political controversy about the war itself and whether it was justified. Despite the fact that the two countries which invaded Iraq are considered the most powerful media empires of the world, they did not succeed in convincing millions of people of the rightness of their actions. If people who opposed the war were not pleased with the news that was available they turned to alternative sources, increasingly through the Internet. Many people, dissatisfied with the news they received from their national media, turned to the media of other countries using the access provided by the Internet. They also visited the websites of anti-war organizations.
