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Abstract
Introduction
Literature Review
Methods
Results
Discussion
References
Appendix A
Appendix B

To conduct the research, we utilized a content analysis method that integrates data collection and analytical techniques to measure the occurrence of identifiable elements in a text or message (Keyton, 2001). The newspapers chosen for this analysis were the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. These newspapers were chosen because of their geographical location, and because of their known influence on key decision makers within the government and Department of Defense. The New York Times and Washington Post are very powerful when it comes to influencing politicians and business leaders and both are located in the East. These two newspapers can also be described as, "newspapers of record," since they help set the agendas for other newspapers in the country. The Chicago Tribune and LA Times are chosen due to their geographical locations of Mid-West and West.

The analysis focused on newspaper articles relating to military combat operations contained within the "local," "national," and "international" sections including the front page of the newspaper. The entire article was analyzed. Stories were collected using the Lexis-Nexis database or gathered from microfilm from the University of Oklahoma's Bizzel Library. Each article was analyzed to determine the tone of the story and the frame employed.

The research featured one primary independent variable. This independent variable was the newspaper reporters’ status as either embedded or non-embedded. This variable is the primary focus of our research; to see if embedded journalists produce different coverage compared to non-embedded reporters.

The other independent variable was the war being examined. We chose three recent wars/conflicts for our analysis. Each of these wars had ground troop movement in occupation of the foreign nation. Our analysis focuses on combat news coverage during the ground operations within a 5-day span starting with first day of ground operations. Our selection of wars and dates are as follows: Operation Desert Storm; Feb. 24-28; Operation Enduring Freedom, Oct. 7-11; Operation Iraqi Freedom, Mar. 20-24.

The unit of analysis was the stories reported in the various newspapers. Four Department of Defense employees affiliated with the University of Oklahoma’s Joint Communication Course conducted the coding of the stories using a code key the team created, shown in Appendix A. Coding norms were established during a 1-hour training session, in which 8 articles outside the 5-day span were analyzed. To achieve inter-coder reliability, the researchers coded articles together to establish norms and then coded 20 articles in split groups to increase the chance that coding would be done with the same judgment. The analysis was used to evaluate the articles origin, content, tone and tenor, depiction of military members and the framing of the article for 291 stories.

The study featured three dependent variables. The first variable was overall tone/attitude, which was assessed using an attitude scale similar to the one employed by Pfau, et al. (2001), to assess the overall tone of the article toward the military. According to Pfau, et al. (2001), this scale has been used for 20 years with an alpha reliability of better than .90. Attitude was assessed via six bipolar adjective pairs, including: Positive to negative; wise to foolish; valuable to worthless; favorable to unfavorable; good to bad; acceptable to unacceptable.

The second variable was the trust of the troops covered in the news reports. Trust was operationalized as scores on the individualized trust scale. The scale was a 5-interval metric to determine variable ranges on the following items: trustworthy to untrustworthy; candid to deceptive; honest to dishonest; and sincere to insincere. This scale has been used by Wheeless and Grotz (1977), who reported a split-half reliability of .92 for the 15 item ITS, Van Leer and Tujillo (1986) used four items from the ITS and reported an alpha of .82. These scales were used to determine the tone of the portrayal of military troops/unit in the newspaper articles.

The study used an attitude scale similar to the one employed by Pfau, et al. (2001), to assess the overall tone of the article toward the military. According to Pfau, et al. (2001), this scale has been used for 20 years with an alpha reliability of better than .90. Attitude was assessed via six bipolar adjective pairs, including: Positive to negative; wise to foolish; valuable to worthless; favorable to unfavorable; good to bad; acceptable to unacceptable.

Finally, the study employed a 5-interval scale to determine the extent to which an article was more or less episodic or thematic. Each article could possess varying degrees of each based on the framing and priming approach. Each variable, episodic and thematic, was given a 5-interval scale with 5 representing more of the variable. Articles can obtain both episodic and thematic framing or very little. This was used to determine if embedded journalists will produce more episodic articles than non-embeds.

Statistical analysis

In the first phase of the analysis, a 3 (embedded, non-embedded, and unknown) x 3 (Desert Storm, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom) multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was computed on the dependent measures of attitude, trust, episodic and thematic.