On The Media: Transcript of "Paper Wait" (December 1, 2006) BROOKE GLADSTONE: So why not then stick to “sectarian violenceâ€?? What changed?

BILL KELLER: You know, it’s kind of emerged as an issue, and then last Sunday we ran a story about one of our reporters in Baghdad, Ed Wong, who surveyed a number of scholars and experts and said the consensus, and not unanimous but pretty broad, is that this clearly fits the definition that most political scientists use of a civil war. You know, I think Ed’s piece kind of raised it back to our attention and so we talked about it some more.

I mean, one of the reasons for not using it was, you know, honestly, a concern that because the White House has contended this is not a civil war, that using the phrase amounted to a kind of unnecessary political statement. So we used it in a qualified way, or we’d cite other people talking about it as a civil war.

But as we were discussing it over the past week, it also became clear that by that standard, it’s a political statement if you don’t call it a civil war. And having Ed write that piece kind of brought it to the surface.

This probably as good an illustration of both framing and frame negotiation as you can find. It shows framing as a process in its entire complexity. There is no final static product at the end only more and more finely structured domain which is susceptible to blending (which profiles some aspects and neglects others). Particularly the last sentence was revealing: no matter whether it is or is not called ‘civil war’ calling it something is a political statement (such as the one below from O’Reilly). However, it is still important that the appellation be perceived as ‘descriptive’ (i.e. corresponding to the real world) so it was necessary to ask experts for definitions.

What is surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly at all) not mentioned much is what kinds of images and idealized scenarios do we bring up when we mention civil war. The Americans have a nice image of the Civil War and we also have a more recent image of the war in Yugoslavia. I would imagine that O’Reilly is bringing up the image of the former to make sense of this statement.

BILL O’REILLY: You have violent, out-of-control chaos, not civil war. Of course, the American media is not helping anyone by over-simplifying the situation and rooting for the USA to lose in Iraq.

And by that token, he is probably justified in saying that of all the prominent features of the US Civil War more are missing in Iraq than are present. However, on a practical note, the Iraqis would probably welcome an old-fashioned two or three-sided civil war, right now, because what is happening is "out-of-control chaos" which is more stressful and dangerous for the average citizen than a war with its fronts and uniform-clad soldiery. Civilians die much less in wars than they do in states of lawlessness. However, 'war' is also a much stronger word and since the situation seems to be worsening, a stronger term is needed. This brings up another (often slightly neglected) element in framing which is iconic and scalar schemas. "War" is associated with an upper range on the scale of conflicts (right below genocide) so it needs to be used to indicate a stronger state. This can override some of the other images of conflict that are brought up.