The latter is not news because it’s what we expect to happen – I can’t think of anyone who expects 14 Marines meeting a gaggle of schoolchildren in a non-combat situation to do anything but be friendly.
Equating Marines giving candy to schoolkids as a newsworthy event is (a) as meaningless as a news report saying “Today, rjung did not rob a bank and got into a gunfight with police”, and (b) grossly insulting to the US Marines, IMO, as it carries an implication that such cordial behavior wasn’t expected of them.
Are you asking if the belief is Japan and Germany (I doubt Hitler himself would invade anything) would invade…or could invade? If its would, then the answer is: Certainly. Its a no brainer. Now, do I believe Japan or Germany COULD invade the US? Well, no…not really. At least not without a whole series of other events happening (like the defeat of the Soviets and England by Germany…I’m not sure how Japan could ever have invaded the mainland, though they DID invade several islands belonging to the US in Alaska IIRC). But if the situation had presented itself I have no doubts both countries would have loved to take the fight directly to the US…especially Japan.
Oh, I’m sure they COULD report other things if they wanted too, and they could certainly insert some additional facts or give more depth, go into the nuance and shades of grey…again if they wanted too. But my point is that they aren’t spinning the news in Iraq necessarily for political reasons (i.e. they don’t have an anti-war or even a pro- war slant)…they are doing it because its their business and they are out to make money…and the news they are reporting is what sells (obviously). Oh, they may slant things based on what they think their core target market wants to hear…but in the end its a business and they want to make money. And they make money by keeping their viewership happy.
Beats me. I don’t have a major problem with how the main stream media reports things in Iraq. If one digs enough on the internet one can get a pretty good picture of whats going on in Iraq to whatever depth one wants to dig too. I was merely saying what the pro-war crowd are bitching about (and this was only my opinion of what their bitch is too boot)…not making a judgement as to how valid that is one way or the other.
-XT
And that’s the crux of it. The U.S. death toll is being reported in order to have an effect, a particular effect, i.e., to sap support from the war.
If that is true, than how do you explain the consistently high ratings of right winfgers on talk radio and cable?
How? My impression of history indicates that Americans tend to support a war once they are on it. FDR’s opponent Dewey claimed to have evidence indicating the FDR knew about Roosevelt. He decided to NOT air it, as it would divide the country during a time of war. Vietnam, I think, was the first war that cleaved the country in two.
Apples and oranges. You’re comparing a hisorical look at a war with the reporting on a war as it was happening. I’d love to find a book of NY Times headlines during WWII, because I doubt that the headline on June 7 was something to effect “Eisenhower Wages Assault on Normandy, 2,500 Allied troops killed”. There seems to have been a time when the media understood that it helps us when the country is behind a war; it helps the other guys when a country is not behind a war. Then again, maybe they do still understand it.
So, you’re saying that ideology plays no role in reporting? In which case I’d ask you to explain Rathergate. Or how Abu Ghraib warranted being on the cover of the NYTimes about forty or fifty times?
You think the coverage of Abu Ghraib is the result of political bias on the part of the news media? I’m sorry, but that’s disturbing.
Abu Ghraib is an example of unspeakable, uncivilised, unexcusable behaviour by us. That justifies all the coverage it has gotten and more. Depraved behaviour by us is something that should be avoidable and heavily punished when it happens. It’s always more newsworthy when we ourselves are doing something we shouldn’t be doing, because we can and should take steps to put and end to it, can punish those responsible for it, and should ensure that it can never happen again.
We are always more responsible for our own actions that we are for someone else’s. That automatically makes what we do, especially if it is misbehaviour, more newsworthy.
I agree with your entire post (other than your first sentence, obviously). But that still does NOT merit the amount of coverage it got. If there werer one less cover story about AG would not the information still have been shared. Two fewer stories? Five? Ten? 25—half as many? Come on…
I wish I had a Lexis-Nexis account so I could compare the number of news articles about Abu Girade vs. the number of news articles about Clinton’s LAX haircut; I suspect the latter would win.
Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. The LAX haircut thing absolutely dominated the press corps for two solid weeks. His handlers had to do serious spin control to contain it.
This is so utterly wrong it can only be paranoia. Here’s a tip, straight from a media guy…
“If it bleeds it leads”
Bad news sells. Bloody wars and sickly seasons move newspapers and increase neilsens. That’s what you’re seeing here. Nothing more.
Let us not also forget that the ‘good’ news (as some would define it) has military PR flacks pushing it on reporters every single day. And, outside mostly the trade press, that sort of thing tends to bring down responsiveness due to reporters not wanting to be seen as ‘shilling’ for the government. It’s much better for their careers to dig stuff up than it is to report press releases.
Someone once claimed to have done a Lexis-Nexis search to prove that Clinton’s LAX haircut got more coverage than the Downing Street Memo. :eek: Wish I had saved the reference…
I would like to understand what people generally think would be “good news” about the current situation in Iraq.
As an example, the media could report more about successes in re-building the infrastructure of Iraq so that people have electricity and water on a reliable basis. I would certainly like to hear more about that, it would help me feel less despair about the situation over there. To be thorough and fair, such an article should also report how much remains to be done, and how many of these re-building efforst have been sabotaged by insurgents.
There have been reports on efforts to round up or shoot up large enclaves of insurgents, but unfortunately success has been mixed.
The possibilities for good news are sadly slim, even in the long run. The best outcome, in my mind, would be a peaceful, secular, inclusionist democracy. The chances for that seem remote, at least right now.
I admit that is strikes me as being really, really weird that someone would complain about the coverage of a WAR concentrating on death and destruction.
Isn’t that what a war is fundamentally about - death and destruction? Isn’t war defined as being a large scale armed conflict? I mean, killing and blowing stuff up is sort of the defining characteristic of a war, isn’t it? When it comes to war, the story IS death and destruction; that’s what differentiates a war from, well, the state of not being in a war.
Covering a war and NOT concentrating primarily on the blood and debris would be quite a bit like covering a football game and not concentrating on the plays from scrimmage, or reviewing a book without concentrating on what’s written inside.
I don’t disagree with this, necesssarily. However, I do have an issue with how things are covered, in terms of tone, context, and balance. And I think Abu Ghraib illustrates this well.
Abu Ghraib had all the makings of a big media sensation. It was a gripping tale, certainly. The story of American soldiers screwing up is always a good one from the corporate media’s standpoint, because it sells copies and draws viewers. It especially does so if there are compelling images that can be exploited, and our fuckwit soldiers gleefully provided these.
If these images had not been present, would the media have been on this story to the extent that they were? I really don’t think they would have been, sorry. It just would not have been “must see TV.”
Likewise, stories of soldiers doing their jobs, even heroically, doesn’t get this kind of copy because it simply doesn’t make for as exciting a story. Never mind that the good soldiers far outnumber the bad, nor that genuine heroism will far exceed the brutality shown in that prison in sheer magnitude. This fact will be lost on the casual viewer whose only impression of our men and women in uniform might well end up being Lynndie England and Charles Graner.
Admittedly, this is something of a pet cause of mine. I got so fed up with the media ignoring genuine war heroes in Afghanistan and Iraq that I started a thread series about some of them. They all have something in common, though - they’re all brave beyond belief, and they all have been ignored in a rather shocking way by network and print media.
There are a lot of things we disagree on, but I think many of us might be able to get behind the notion that if you earn a Navy Cross, Distinguished Service Cross, or Air Force Cross, the New York Times should print a story about you.
This sort of fine detail doesn’t matter. Overall, the point is that even if you claim that US neutrality in WWII was an option (a dubious proposition at best) there were, to put it mildly, very substantial grounds for being in the war. The US government’s popular mandate to be in the war was unarguably not based upon the US population’s illusions about casualties.
Other have commented but you deserve a pileon for this comment. You are seriously, seriously trying to suggest that the motivation for media reporting of the US death toll is a desire to sap the war effort? The media reports cats stuck in trees. The media reports road deaths. The media reports deaths in domestic quarrels. But you are, with your bare face hanging out, trying to suggest that US citizens being shot and blown up in a war is not an otherwise newsworthy event, but for a particular political motivation?
You badly need to conduct a reality check.
You are question begging something ferocious. Classic hawk nonsense:
“Maybe we shouldn’t fight this war”
“Don’t say things like that, don’t you know you’re hurting our ability to fight this war?”
“I’m questioning whether we should be fighting this war”
“Don’t say thing’s like that, we’re fighting a war, asshole!”
“I know that, but maybe we shouldn’t be. Why are we fighting this war?”
“Listen asshole, how many times do I have to tell you, we’re fighting a goddamn war, don’t you realise the damage you’re doing to our efforts to fight this war?”
“I’m not concerned about that, because I don’t think we should be fighting this war”
“Which part of ‘you are hurting our efforts to fight this fucking war’ don’t you understand, asshole? Charge this man with treason and take him away!”
The question that needs to be answered first is whether the war is one that should be fought. The media in WWII (like the population) answered that question in the affirmative. They then moved on to take steps to keep up morale etc.
The answer to that fundamental question is yet to be agreed in relation to the Iraq war. The media is therefore not inclined to help you and your fellow hawks out by withholding relevant information from the US public.
Come up with some good solid reasons for being in the war that the US population will accept even when wide awake, and then you won’t have tiptoe around desperately trying to keep things quiet so the US public doesn’t wake up.
This’d be much better:
“American forces grew stronger than ever yesterday, as 16 new troops, the product of spontaneous generation, threw aside the mouldering logs that had covered their development, donned fresh uniforms, and joined in glorious battle to defeat the forces of darkness.”
Oh, a media guy… You don’t really think that a platitude, which might be true in general, fully explains what might be reported by the media in every instance, do you? Do you think that politics doesn’t enter into the equation at all? If you do, pass the bong back to rjung.
So therefore what you’re really saying is not that the media is politically motivated in reporting the dead (since that is, as you accept, basically newsworthy), but that they should be more politically motivated in deliberately withholding otherwise newsworthy information, right?
I’ll restate slightly: I suggest that motivation for the mass media is to sap the President of power and support through, and in spite of the war effort. Do you not think that is true?
They are certainly newsworthy, as other other occurences in war. But there is a matter of degree. For instance, Abu Ghraib, as horrible and inexcusable as it was, it certailnly didn’t merit the attention it did. Here’s an exchange I had with ascenray, who I thought put things well.
To which I responded:
I agree. But that is behind us. Especially now. Unless you are part of a very small minority that think that we should just up and leave Iraq tomorrow, we are there and have to make the best of a bad situation. I think that means that our own media should report the facts in a manner that–at the least–does not put us in the “worst” light. Report, Abu Ghraib, report the soldiers who gave their lives, but don’t use it as a club to beat the President over the head with. He is the leader of the war effort, and that which weakens him, weakens it. And that hurts us all. There is plenty of good going on that goes unreported, or underreported, by the mass media. Furt provided a link that provides much of it.