It took that noted media critic Jon Stewart to put into words what I -- and no
doubt millions of others -- were feeling.
The host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show was interviewing Jim Kelly,
the managing editor of Time magazine, on Monday night. They were
discussing whether the US media ought to broadcast video of American POWs and
dead soldiers, footage that the Arab news service Al-Jazeera had already shown.
But Stewart could have been talking about coverage of the war in general when
he asked Kelly, "Isn't it the job of the journalist to put these things in
context, not just point a camera?"
Indeed it is. But that hasn't always been apparent in coverage of the war in
Iraq during the past week, especially on television. From the moment that US
bombs blasted Saddam Hussein's bunker shortly before 10 p.m. on March 19,
we've been deluged with greenish night-vision images of downtown Baghdad, the
carnage of the US "Shock and Awe" campaign, an endless parade of generals and
maps, and -- in this war's principal innovation -- reporters who are "embedded"
with military units, covering battles as they happen. Some of this has been
truly astounding. But what it all means is another matter altogether.
What we've seen has been a fragmented whole that adds up to considerably less
than its parts. There's been some outstanding journalism on display during the
past week. I was riveted on Sunday night as CBS News reporter Scott Pelley, on
60 Minutes, covered a firefight that was taking place just a few yards
from where he stood. Some outstanding newspaper coverage has been offered as
well. From Baghdad, the New York Times' John Burns and the Washington
Post's Anthony Shadid have filed stories full of substance and nuance. From
the West Bank, the Boston Globe's Charles Radin wrote a piece for
Monday's paper that documented in depressing detail how the war is driving even
well-educated Palestinians into reluctantly supporting Saddam.
But as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at one of his testy briefings,
each reporter is offering only a "slice" of a much bigger picture -- and that
picture can barely be glimpsed. Which leaves me full of admiration and
frustrated at the same time. The unrealistic optimism of Saturday gave way to
the (probably) unrealistic pessimism of Monday and Tuesday. But what winning
the war truly means -- for the US, for its relations with the world, and for
the people of Iraq -- well, that will have to wait.
"I think by and large the coverage is excellent," says Robert Zelnick, who
chairs Boston University's journalism department and who is a former war
correspondent for ABC News. "The balance among field reports, Pentagon
analysis, military experts, and reports from such capitals as Amman and Cairo
has been reasonable." Zelnick complains, though, about "a bit too much
boosterism, particularly on Fox." And he points, too, to "occasional gaps." By
way of example, he notes that "one heard much about the violation of Geneva
Convention rules by the Iraqis, but nothing on the basis under international
law for the coalition's undeclared war." That's a gap big enough to fly an
Apache helicopter through.
Adds Steve Rendall, senior analyst with the media-watch group Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR): "When I turned on the TV the first night of the
bombing, I thought martial law had been declared in the US; there were generals
everywhere. There is also too much unprocessed information. Too little
analysis. There is especially too little reporting and analysis of nonmilitary
aspects of the war: humanitarian questions, questions of international law, and
political questions are too important to be left to the ex-generals."
WITHOUT QUESTION, the Pentagon's decision to embed reporters with military
units (the "pre-Grenada norm," Zelnick observes) has done much to shape the
tenor of the coverage. The reporters know only what's happening with their
little "slice," but by God, they're there, they're costing a ton of money, and
the networks are going to run with what they've got. No less a figure than
ABC's Ted Koppel, who's at least three times older than most of the soldiers
he's covering, jumped into the action. Overall, it's been a plus, but cool
field reports from the back of a jeep are no substitute for understanding.
Perhaps the low point came late last week, when CNN, the Fox News Channel, and
MSNBC all ran with endless live pictures -- via jerky videophone -- of their
units speeding through the Iraqi desert. What viewers learned was that there
sure is a lot of sand in Iraq.
What's emerged, too, has been an extraordinarily positive and sympathetic
portrayal of the fighting men and women. On Monday's NBC Nightly News,
for instance, we watched as reporter Kerry Sanders helped a soldier who'd been
shot through the hand call his mother via his satellite phone -- a moment that
was recycled in far more treacly fashion later that evening on MSNBC. As Jack
Shafer observed in Slate this week, "By prepping reporters in boot camps
and then throwing them in harm's way with the invading force, the US military
has generated a bounty of positive coverage of the Iraq invasion, one that
decades of spinning, bobbing, and weaving at rear-echelon briefings could never
achieve." This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's far from the whole
story.
"I suppose the embedding is useful overall, and occasionally -- as with the
tragedy at Camp Pennsylvania -- it has resulted in on-the-spot coverage of hard
news," says University of Virginia government professor Larry Sabato, referring
to a fragging incident that took place over the weekend. "But embedding has
also resulted in a loss of the big picture during a good bit of the coverage,
with loads of soft, human-interest coverage that actually tells the viewers
nothing of importance. Seeing a TV reporter riding in the back of a
dust-covered jeep with his gas mask on makes for great video. But when he tells
us, as one did, `We're on the move, but I can't say where we are or where we're
heading or what we're going to do when we get there,' what's the point? To
prove there are soldiers on the ground moving toward Baghdad? I think we knew
that."
This focus on the human-interest angle has led to some weird moments. On Monday
night, CNN broadcast a piece on Shoshana Johnson, one of the American
prisoners-of-war and the first woman to be taken captive in this conflict.
Reporter Ed Lavandera, at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, interviewed Johnson's
sister, an Army captain, and her father, a retired military officer.
It was a nice piece -- until anchor Aaron Brown decided to bat it around a bit
with Retired General Wesley Clark, who was in the studio. Brown noted that only
one woman was taken prisoner in the Gulf War, and he asked if she had been
treated any "differently" from the men. Clark replied that such "different"
treatment was always a risk. An uncomfortable pause. Then Clark expanded on
what he'd said, explaining that, yes, there were some "sexual connotations"
regarding the female POW 12 years ago, but that she'd been "badly injured." He
added: "That may have kept it from being worse than it was." Brown awkwardly
closed a segment he probably wished he hadn't started by expressing the hope
that Johnson -- who, judging from photos, was clearly not injured, at
least not seriously -- would be treated "decently."
At least Brown's tabloid moment appeared to be inadvertent. No such luck at the
other two cable news channels, Fox and MSNBC. By Monday, Fox had abandoned the
brain-suck of continuing coverage during prime time in order to bring back its
regular programs. And the network's biggest star, Bill O'Reilly, was in rare
form, attacking documentary filmmaker Michael Moore for his angry criticism of
George W. Bush during the Oscars ("This guy truly despises America"), Arab
critics of US policy ("We're going to have to blow up these mosques, and you
know what those Al-Jazeera idiots are going to do with that"), antiwar
protesters who break the law ("Well, they hate America"), the Senate minority
leader ("I believe that Tom Daschle's career is pretty much over"), and the
French (US troops need to find Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, he said, so
they can "ram 'em up Chirac's nose and go home").
Yet O'Reilly's calculated, hourlong rant was bracing compared to the icky
sentimentality that is MSNBC's flavor of the month. Having gotten creamed in
the ratings with every other approach, the network's latest shtick is to cling
to "America's Bravest." Kerry Sanders's report on the soldier with the shot
hand was expanded beyond reason. And I watched as the perpetually leering
anchor, Lester Holt, interviewed a California mother and her new baby, who'd
been able to talk with her military husband thanks to -- yes, MSNBC! "We talk
about America's Bravest here on MSNBC," said one reporter, walking through a
sea of yellow ribbons at a military base. There's even an "America's Bravest"
wall in the studio, filled with photos of military men and women sent in by
their families.
Of course, if this doesn't boost ratings in, say, three weeks, the
geniuses who've run the network into the ground will rip down the photos and
move Michael Savage's show into prime time.
Ashleigh Banfield's post-9/11 stint in Afghanistan is looking more and more
like MSNBC's golden age.
THINK OF the war coverage as a series of concentric circles. The one closest to
the war is made up of the all-news channels. It's all war, all the time, but
with the banality of continuing coverage, you rarely see an actual report --
just more talk, more generals, more embedded reporters, and the greenish glow
of Baghdad, nearly always on screen during the nighttime hours in case the
bombs start dropping once again.
The next concentric circle comprises the Big Three network-news operations,
whose newscasts -- with a total of some 30 million viewers -- manage to provide
at least some semblance of coherent coverage, or at least as much as can be
crammed into a half-hour minus commercials. ABC's World News Tonight did
a particularly good job on Monday, adding to its mix of war news a report on
Iraqi civilians injured by US bombs and the looming humanitarian disaster in
Basra. (And by the way, there is no excuse for the ongoing wretchedness of
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, on PBS, with its mind-boggling sucking-up
to government officials -- I suspect Lehrer would have actually licked the
boots of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on Tuesday if they hadn't
been separated by a video screen -- and its reliance on what might be called
official news.)
Next is radio. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as serious commercial
radio news anymore. On Tuesday, I heard Rush Limbaugh predict that the
irregulars who've been battling US and British troops will turn out to be
members of Al Qaeda and Hamas. "You wait. Mark my words," he said, then
continued: "Here's some other news." Other? News? Fortunately, public radio
offers an alternative to such garbage. The newscasts I heard -- NPR's All
Things Considered, the BBC World Service, and The World (a
collaboration of the BBC, PRI, and Boston's WGBH Radio) -- all offered
admirable breadth and depth, better than the all-news channels, and better than
the network newscasts, too. On Monday, the BBC reported on how the French,
Russian, and Chinese media are covering the war. All Things Considered
broadcast a moving commentary by a young woman, an Iraqi immigrant, who was
recently questioned by the FBI after speaking out against the war. On Tuesday,
The World had a feature on people who are training in Geneva,
Switzerland, to become international-aid workers, the vanguard of those who
will attempt to put Iraq back together.
In a way that is counterintuitive, though, the war has been a triumph for print
-- the slower the better. Yes, national papers such as the New York
Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal have
been providing outstanding coverage (the Journal's story that the White
House plans to parcel out reconstruction to politically wired American
companies such as Bechtel and Dick
Cheney's old haunt, Halliburton, has
been the scoop of the war so far), and their Web sites often provide better
access to new information than television. But magazines, even though they're
days behind, have found a way to be relevant as no videophone shot of sand will
ever be.
The most important thing I learned this week, for instance, was in Time.
Michael
Elliott and James Carney reported that in March 2002, our only
president stuck his head into a meeting with Condoleezza Rice and three US
senators and proclaimed: "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out." Has there ever
been surer evidence that Bush's six-month dalliance with the UN was just for
show? Newsweek had a fascinating tick-tock on the steps leading up to
last Wednesday's "decapitation" strike, which may or may not have killed
Saddam.
This week's New Yorker is filled with enough context for a week's worth
of reading -- Nicholas Lemann on the steps that led to the war, David Remnick
on reconstruction, Anthony Lane on Tony Blair, and Jon Lee Anderson on Baghdad
in the final days before the war. Here is Anderson's description of the cast of
characters that had gathered toward the end: "The prelude to the war in Iraq
attracted many eccentrics to Baghdad, among them a Russian photojournalist who
wore a green paratrooper's outfit and a tall, blond human shield named Gordon
Sloan, who was famous for having participated in the Australian version of `Big
Brother.' He had been filmed naked in the shower, and was subsequently known as
Donkey Boy."
The New York Review of Books, too, proved its relevance, with a report
from Northern Iraq that seethes with intrigue, the resignation letter of a
State Department official that seethes with frustration, and a round-up of
books on the Middle East and terrorism that leads reviewer Tony Judt to compare
the US today to Imperial Germany before World War I -- perhaps a bit too much
context, but infinitely preferable to another general and another map.
DANNY SCHECHTER knows what's wrong. In his daily Web log for the Media Channel
(www.mediachannel.org), the financially struggling international media-watch
Web site that he runs, Schechter offers a running commentary on what he sees as
the banality of mainstream coverage and serves up bits of stuff from off the
beaten path. When I asked him what he found particularly bad, he told me,
"Virtually everything on Fox, except in those rare minutes when, say, a
correspondent tells the truth, as in the reports from Jordan which disclose
that the whole population is opposed to war." He also loathes "the whole
groveling uncritical collegial relationship with military advisers."
So where does Schechter get his news? He says he's been watching the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation -- which he can receive in New York, where he's based
-- as well as the Globalvision News Network (www.gvnews.net, started recently
by his long-time business partner, Rory O'Connor), and two British newspapers,
the Guardian and the Independent (particularly its correspondent
Robert Fisk, much hated among prowar types).
Stephen Burgard, director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern
University and a former editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times, has
been paying close attention to NBC News ("Tom Brokaw . . . is still
the best in the business at coordinating and making sense of a breaking
story"), John Burns's dispatches in the Times ("well-written and
interesting to read on life in a city under attack"), and the Associated
Press's photos ("the old guys know how to do it when everything is on the
line").
Jerry Lanson, who chairs the journalism department at Suffolk University and
who wrote a commentary piece for the Christian Science Monitor on
Tuesday arguing for US networks to air Al-Jazeera's footage of the American
POWs ("War is hell, and unless we see that with some regularity when it's being
fought, we may well make the mistake of pursuing it over and over again"), has
been reading the New York Times "for its thoroughness," listening to the
BBC, "which looks critically at US coverage," and watching CNN "for a solid job
of keeping up with developments and headlines."
FAIR's Steve Rendall recommends several independent media outlets, especially
CommonDreams.org, a clearinghouse for liberal and left news and commentary.
BU's Bob Zelnick says he's been watching everything and reading the
Times, "which has been all over the story with compelling reports."
UVA's Larry Sabato has been watching "too much TV" -- "even C-SPAN" -- but
likes to contrast the skepticism of ABC's Peter Jennings with Fox, which "is
openly rooting for the coalition forces."
There's a torrent of news rushing by, and you've only got a thimble. On Monday,
I started making a list of angles that a reasonably well-informed person needs
to keep track of: is Saddam dead? . . . the humanitarian crisis in
southern Iraq . . . the Al-Jazeera video of the POWs . . .
the ongoing tension between the Turks and the Kurds . . . civilian
deaths from US bombing . . . the unexpected resistance encountered by
American and British troops . . . the worldwide protest movement
. . . Russia's alleged sale of military technology to Iraq
. . . the frayed relations between the US and its erstwhile friends
France and Germany . . . the reaction of the Arab world. That list is
by no means complete.
Jim Kelly never really answered Jon Stewart's question. But the fact is that
you're not going to get much context by sitting in front of a television
set hour after hour. Turn on the radio, especially public radio. Read -- not
just newspapers, but the Web sites of the international press and quality
magazines.
This is not a simple story. But the truth -- make that the truths -- are out
there.
Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com. Read his daily Media Log at
BostonPhoenix.com.
Issue Date: March 28 - April 3, 2003
