On The Media-- The War in Iraq = Iraqi Civil War

ETHAN BRONNER: Our policy is not to label it a civil war. We recognize and describe elements of civil war in what's going on in Iraq. We tend to call it sectarian conflict, sectarian violence. Civil war, to us, feels like a stage of conflict that we are not convinced Iraq is in yet. It may feel occasionally like it's there, that it puts its foot there sometimes, but it doesn't stay there. And so, it seems to us that if we were to call it a civil war, then we will have labeled it something that we're not convinced it is, and in that sense, it's not useful.

More and more examples of interviews everywhere can be used as examples of 'frame negotiation'. (On The Media is one of the few to provide free transcripts.)  Every time I hear one I am amazed how important this aspect of our social cognition is and how little it is studied. Another good example are call in shows - I love listening to BBC Radio Five Live - where issues are debated through story telling establishing scripts and scenarios, commentary (paragons), and folk (as well as expert to a degree) theories.

Here's another beauty from an interview on the same programme:

BOB GARFIELD: But should that dictate for the media whether or not they call a thing by its name?

LARRY DIAMOND: I personally have no problem, as a scholar and an American citizen, with the media recognizing the obvious reality, that when, on average, Iraqis are dying at an annual rate of 30 to 40,000 a year in an internal conflict, that's civil war. And I think what the media might do editorially is say, look, Iraq is in a civil war. It's pretty obvious. The challenge now is how to diminish the violence and stabilize the country so that the United States can get out; that if we simply withdraw unconditionally, with no change in the parameters of the situation or in our policy, the Civil War will intensify catastrophically for Iraqis, for the region and for our own national interest, and everybody will lose. I think there's something actually perhaps to be gained from starting to use the language in terms of analytic clarity and sharpening our thinking about how we need a different, more focused strategy for diminishing and eventually resolving this civil war.