Iraq is no Vietnam - in the Media
I was just watching the video on DemocracyNow.org about Unseen Pictures, Untold Stories: How The U.S. Press Has Sanitized The War in Iraq and encourage you to all check it out! Amy Goodman has a great video interview (with several viewpoints presented) and transcript examining media coverage in Iraq. Several reporters took a survey of the 6 major national newspapers and Times and Newsweek and found that, none showed any dead American soldiers (except for 1 with a blanket covering him) but did show Iraqi dead (but rarely a back-story) which creates an "obscured view of the cost of war". The journalists who are there live though speak of seeing and experiencing a much different reality than what is presented in the media. It is true that American newspapers naturally tend to draw away from graphic photos in newspapers (even car accidents) compared to other countries, but there is still a great disparity in what is presented.
Aaron Glantz, in returning the U.S. from Iraq in May of 2004 found "that people here ... were not talking about Fallujah. They didn't know about Fallujah. People knew about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal because of the photos that were played on CBS News and published in The New Yorker magazine, but people had no idea about what happened in Fallujah, ... the mass slaughter of civilians at the hands of U.S. military, all shown on satellite television to everyone throughout the country." Glantz said he also felt threatened or "targeted" when U.S. soldiers would point their guns at him, as a journalist, perhaps because they were young, scared and trigger-happy in a foreign land, yet he never felt threatened among the Iraqis.
Glantz also criticized, "by not informing people, we make them -- we infantilize them so that they are shocked when they hear there's torture, and they are shocked when something terrible happens that does get covered". When this does happen though, we do have the child-like tendency to want to hide our heads under the covers and think, "no - it can't be, it must be exaggerated" when actually it's the truth all along that's been exaggerated d into a more ideal reality that's easier for us Americans to digest on a day-to-day basis.
James Rainey, who wrote "Unseen Pictures, Untold Stories" in the L.A. Times said about David Leeson whose photos where shown in the story, "he is a terrific journalist and person. He said -- he -- the way he felt when he was working in Iraq was that 'if I am hurting inside, then I want you,' that means the reader, the viewer, the audience, 'I want you to hurt inside. And if I am brought to tears, I want you to be brought to tears, too.'", concluding that he agrees also, and sometimes it feels like you are throwing a tantrum and trying to say, "Pay attention! Pay attention! People are dying here!"
It's been said that the photos coming out of the Vietnam war helped to end it. James Rainey in the interview adds, "the photographs had played an important role, but that really the American public sort of led in that regard". So not only does the news and photos need to get out, but people need to do something about it for it to have an effect.
This all reminds me of the quote Goodman said at the Peace & Justice Expo here in Omaha when describing the difference between Fox News and Al Jazeera - "Fox shows where the missles take off, Al Jazeera shows where they land."
- Brian Wiese
Aaron Glantz, in returning the U.S. from Iraq in May of 2004 found "that people here ... were not talking about Fallujah. They didn't know about Fallujah. People knew about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal because of the photos that were played on CBS News and published in The New Yorker magazine, but people had no idea about what happened in Fallujah, ... the mass slaughter of civilians at the hands of U.S. military, all shown on satellite television to everyone throughout the country." Glantz said he also felt threatened or "targeted" when U.S. soldiers would point their guns at him, as a journalist, perhaps because they were young, scared and trigger-happy in a foreign land, yet he never felt threatened among the Iraqis.
Glantz also criticized, "by not informing people, we make them -- we infantilize them so that they are shocked when they hear there's torture, and they are shocked when something terrible happens that does get covered". When this does happen though, we do have the child-like tendency to want to hide our heads under the covers and think, "no - it can't be, it must be exaggerated" when actually it's the truth all along that's been exaggerated d into a more ideal reality that's easier for us Americans to digest on a day-to-day basis.
It's been said that the photos coming out of the Vietnam war helped to end it. James Rainey in the interview adds, "the photographs had played an important role, but that really the American public sort of led in that regard". So not only does the news and photos need to get out, but people need to do something about it for it to have an effect.
This all reminds me of the quote Goodman said at the Peace & Justice Expo here in Omaha when describing the difference between Fox News and Al Jazeera - "Fox shows where the missles take off, Al Jazeera shows where they land."
- Brian Wiese
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