Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
The working press receives credit from some independent observers across the political spectrum. "Coverage of the war seems to have been well handled," says former New Yorker magazine writer Michael Arlen, whose seminal book "Living Room War" examined press coverage of the Vietnam War. "I don't feel we're not being shown important stuff because of political concerns."
"I've been satisfied with the way the media has covered Iraq," adds Robert Zelnick, a political conservative who is chairman of the department of journalism at Boston University and former Pentagon correspondent for ABC News. "My premise is: Would somebody reading American newspapers and/or watching TV coverage have a good appreciation for the drift of the events there? The answer is absolutely."
Journalists appear to take comfort from the fact that their war reporting receives criticism from many quarters, suggesting that this is a sign the press is doing a balanced job. "'We show too much.' 'We show too little.' 'We are undermining the effort.' 'We are puppets of the government.' We get them all every single day," CNN anchor Aaron Brown told viewers last Friday night, reciting the litany of complaints.
But are all media complaints created equal? There's an easy argument to be made that conservative critics have successfully "worked the refs" and pushed the media debate so far toward not showing the realities of war that an unlikely starting point has become whether images of flag-draped coffins are suitable for public consumption.
When "Nightline" announced that host Ted Koppel was going to read the names of all the 700-plus U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, conservative editor William Kristol dubbed it a "stupid statement"; conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group banned the program from its eight local ABC affiliates; and Washington Post TV columnist Lisa de Moraes suggested it was a "cheap, content-free stunt designed to tug at our heartstrings and bag a big number on the second night of the May ratings race." Ironically, the debate over "Nightline" publicly honoring the fallen in Iraq unfolded the same week the new World War II Memorial opened, unofficially, in Washington. For years, veterans groups had complained that those who died in World War II were not being sufficiently honored. As one 81-year-old vet told Cox News Service last week, "Finally, they remembered there was a World War II."
"People are now offended by symbols of death," says MacArthur. "That shows how far in terms of the censorship equation we've gotten." That the names of dead soldiers or photographs of their flag-draped coffins would become sources of contention reflects "a kind of snowball of conservatism that has built up in this country during the last decade," says Howe. "And maybe 9/11 has contributed as well. There's an intense feeling of vulnerability that's new to Americans, and they don't want to think about it."
"We're conscious of that climate, but we make our decisions based on what we think is best," says Leroy Sievers, executive producer of "Nightline." He admits the network was "shocked" at how controversial its Friday broadcast became.
Perhaps nothing better illustrates the altered political and journalistic climate than how the ghastly images of the charred bodies in Fallujah were handled compared with the press treatment of the equally grisly photos taken 11 years ago in Somalia, showing the corpse of an American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. That incident, in which 18 U.S. soldiers were killed, became the basis for the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
American broadcasters immediately blurred the images from Fallujah, and only seven of the nation's 20 largest newspapers ran a photo on Page 1. Of those, only two, the Washington Post and USA Today, opted for arguably the most graphic: Iraqis taking turns beating the burned corpses with shoes. Most of the remaining major dailies ran the photos inside, some with editors' notes explaining the decision to publish the pictures at all.
