For America, the Iraqi quagmire is getting worse day by day. It is posing a dilemma for the US media, which acted initially as a pre-invasion cheerleader and now is forced to reveal the incongruities of being an occupying power.
The US media controlled the context of the assault on Iraq, framing it within the parameters of Weapons of Mass Destruction. In this connection, the invaders have come up empty-handed.
Conventionally, the role of media is to educate, inform, and entertain. Entertainment, however, is trumping education and information. Even more than entertainment, it is titillation which is making war reportage more akin to a video game.
On the Middle East, the problem stems less from lack of information and more from disinformation. They say that it takes two people to speak the truth: one to speak it and one to hear it.
In a revealing survey published in the Middle East Journal several years ago, educated people in the US were found to be more prejudiced and biased and close-minded about the Palestine conflict as opposed to others less formally schooled. It is mostly due to a sameness of perspective and lack of diversity seen in both print and electronic media. The role of popular Hollywood movies also cannot be overlooked. In the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, the Arab character was romanticized; now it is mostly caricatured.
Up to and during the war, the news media, in effect, became an arm of the Bush Administration. From reporting, it turned to applauding, invariably diminishing the ability of the average American to judge what was and is happening. BBC director general Greg Dyke told the Guardian that he was concerned over the US media’s “unquestioning” coverage of the war in Iraq, commenting that “many US networks wrapped themselves in the American flag and swapped impartiality for patriotism.”
The alleged benefits of invading and occupying Iraq were over-repeated while their perils were under-reported. Dissent was muffled by painting it as disloyal and anti-war folk were tarnished as anti-troops and anti-patriotic. MSNBC-TV cancelled Phil Donahue’s popular talk show, reportedly concluding that the TV network could not afford to air the show of someone who “seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.”
UNICEF reports that up to 500,000 Iraqi children may have died due to sanctions were given short shrift. (A comment by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes that “the price is worth it” was ignored by mainstream US media.) Also played down was coverage of anti-war rallies across the globe and protests by mainstream Christian clergy, including Roman Catholics and Anglicans. The media watchdog group, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, criticized America’s most respected newspaper, the New York Times, commenting that in its news coverage in the period before the war, the paper “played down opposition to war and exaggerated support for George W. Bush’s Iraq policy - in ways that ranged from questionable to dishonest.” Then, too, the role of the UN, which was founded to prevent wars, and not to authorize them, escaped critical media scrutiny.
As American soldier deaths in Iraq mount and Howard Dean’s US Presidential campaign - grounded partially in criticism of America’s pursuit of the Iraq war - is gaining momentum, public opinion and media reporting finally may be beginning to shift. After months of generally reporting only US combat deaths in Iraq, the media recently announced that more US soldiers have died since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations than the number of soldiers who died during the fighting.
There may be yet another casualty of the war: the reputation of the US media.
