Sorry I didn’t link to this sooner:

Blog reports about Marvin Kalb’s Harvard Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy study, The Israel-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict, (40-page PDF) are quoting heavily from the report on the study at World Politics Watch, How the Media Partnered With Hezbollah: Harvard’s Cautionary Report. The World Politics Watch summary is accurate, and telling, of the biased impact of coverage provided by the Western and Arab media. However, the World Politics Watch concluding paragraphs are stronger than Kalb’s study. World Politics Watch calls for vigilance and responsibility by Western reporters, and even moreso by their editors and the talking heads at home, not to be taken in, not to permit themselves to be part of propaganda exercises by our enemies, and to more clearly label any such reports as such and say what’s missing.

From the WPW article:

Marvin Kalb, of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, methodically traces the transformation of the media “from objective observer to fiery advocate.” Kalb painstakingly details how Hezbollah exercised absolute control over how journalists portrayed its side of the conflict, while Israel became “victimized by its own openness.”…
Journalists did Hezbollah’s work, offering little resistance to the Islamic militia’s effort to portray itself as an idealistic and heroic army of the people, facing an aggressive and ruthless enemy. With Hezbollah’s unchallenged control of journalists’ access within its territory, it managed to almost completely eliminate from the narrative crucial facts, such as the fact that it deliberately fired its weapons from deep within civilian population centers, counting on Israeli forces to have no choice but defend themselves by targeting rocket launchers where they stood. Hezbollah’s strong support from Syria and Iran — including the provision of deadly weapons — faded in the coverage, as the conflict increasingly became portrayed as pitting one powerful army against a band of heroic defenders of a civilian population….

It’s all worth checking out.