{"id":19859,"date":"2007-01-18T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2007-01-18T05:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/surge-count\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:45:26","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:45:26","slug":"surge-count","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2007\/01\/18\/surge-count\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Surge\u2019 Count"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to describing President Bush\u2019s plan for increasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq, a turn of phrase can mean a lot. A database search of media coverage for the week of Jan 10-Jan 17 conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, found that the word \u201csurge\u201d \u2014 which is favored by war supporters \u2014 showed up in 18,118 stories, about twice as often as \u201cescalate\u201d or \u201cescalation\u201d (10,112), which conjure up bad memories ofVietnam. More loaded terms, those highlighting the negative implications of the policy, trailed \u201csurge\u201d by a factor of about 13-to-1. In the Google search, the word \u201cgamble,\u201d for instance, appeared in 1,350 stories in connection with Bush and Iraq. \u201cLast chance\u201d appeared in another 1,098 stories. Perhaps the most negative Vietnam-era term of all also showed up in the press. \u201cQuagmire\u201d appeared 1,044 times in the Google search. Additionally, the football phrase for a last-ditch effort in a losing game, \u201cHail Mary\u201d or \u201cHail Mary pass\u201d appeared in 334 stories. But journalists and TV pundits also coined a play on that term, calling Bush\u2019s policy a \u201cHail Maliki pass\u201d (227 stories), a reference to the Iraqi president on whom his U.S. counterpart has pinned much of his hope for surge success. Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s the number of times the word “surge” appeared in media stories about President Bush’s plan for increasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq, according to a database search for the week of Jan 10-Jan 17 conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. That frequency was close to double the number that used the word “escalate” or “escalation” (10,112).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":"","sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[]},"categories":[],"bylines":[791],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-19859","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","bylines-pew-research-center-staff","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states"],"label":"Short Read","post_parent":0,"word_count":203,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2007\/01\/18\/surge-count\/","art_direction":false,"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"\u2018Surge\u2019 Count","description":"That's the number of times the word \"surge\" appeared in media stories about President Bush's plan for increasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq, according to a database search for the week of Jan 10-Jan 17 conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. 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