All in all, the Right will claim this, whatever the actual findings and intent of the study, as a reason to silence criticism of the administration and its policies. I’d chalk that up as a victory for the terrorists.

He writes this:

MEDIA SLANT, TERRORISTS, AND the emboldenment effect. “Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable ‘emboldenment effect’ on insurgents there.”

His link leads to James Taranto’s “Best of the Web,” with a summary of the Harvard study and a link to the actual text of the study.

Of course, the study says exactly nothing about “media slant.” And Reynolds says exactly nothing about who is making the “emboldening” statements.

Here’s how the authors of the study measured emboldening statements:

we construct an automated mentions count of potentially
“emboldening” statements reported in major U.S. news outlets, which we define as the number of times top Bush administration officials—the President, Vice-President, Secretary of Defense,
Secretary of State, Press Secretary, and the U.S. commander Iraq—refer to statements or actions by other U.S. political figures that might encourage violent extremist groups in Iraq

In short, the “emboldening statements” counted for the study are those in which the Bush administration accuses somebody else of “emboldening the enemy.”

The irony is rich and deep.