The latest polls show that the media has taken a big hit during this war. Before Sept 11, something like 70-80% of the people polled were happy with the way the media covered current events. Now, that number has dropped to 47%.
Today I had a cold, and stayed home from work. So I put CNN on in my office and watched it most of the day while I worked.
The coverage was relentlessly negative. The big stories of the day? A bomb went awry and killed three Americans. And an American was injured in an Israeli rocket attack. Crossfire? An attack on John Ashcroft. ‘The Point’ - another attack on Ashcroft. Wolf Blitzer devoted an hour to just how screwed up the U.S. military must be (after all, it has helped destroy an entire government while suffering a grand total of FOUR casualties, so it must be horribly inept). Another story on a taxi driver attacked by U.S. warplanes on a road that is heavily attacked because it has been a transportation conduit for Taliban trying to leave. Another commentary criticizing the government for its last terrorist warning.
I think there was one positive story the whole time I watched - a story about Afghan girls getting to go to school again. The rest of the entire day was spent on handwringing analysis about how ‘wrong’ everything is.
There have been a number of parody news casts on the web along the lines of, “If today’s media covered WWII”, which are hilarious and also sobering in that they show just how adversarial the media has become.
So what do you think? Is the media part of the problem? Is the coverage too negative?
Guinastasia makes a good point…there are horrible things going on in the world at every second, and the U.S. media does a good job of pointing these things out, which is good, but I think the media also needs to take a more “big-picture” stance, and convey the ideas that almost none of the world problems are goingto go away soon, and just generally be more active on motivating people to help the many problems that face the world.
I haven’t actually absorbed much media lately…so my apologies if I am out of date.
I also think that the media needs to be more critical on the U.S. government standpoint. For instance, George Bush ahs frequently made reference to the American way of life, and the media seems to rarely, if ever, criticize the American way of life. Although they do not directly criticize alternate ways of life, they do present negative facts about other ways of life, such as the talmud schools that teach that terrorrism will be rewarded by God. I think the media certainly should be pointing out negative facts like those, but it should also point out that their are also horrible aspects to the American way of life.
Really? How about for Afghan women? How about the fact that the media was predicting a ‘quagmire’ in Afghanistan, yet the Taliban has ceased to exist as a political force with a grand total of four American casualties?
Oh, and a small detail - the coalition meeting in Bonne came to agreement for the form of government in Afghanistan. This is a big deal. CNN covered it for a couple of minutes, then added “The irony here is that the person who is supposed to lead the government may have been injured by U.S. friendly fire.”
How about the fact that the U.S. hasn’t had another major terrorist attack? Or that a mountain compound which contains a good chunk of the Al-Quaida leadership and perhaps Bin Laden himself is currently under attack?
How about the fact that Arafat finally cracked down and arrested a number of members of Hamas, as a direct result of the Israeli rocket attack?
On the domestic front, the government now believes that the 94 year old woman in connecticut died after exposure to a letter contaminated by the same sources that contaminated the other letters, meaning that she isn’t a new ‘index’ case indicating a second Anthrax attack.
But I understand why you’re so negative about this - you’ve probably been listening to CNN. (-:
A slight hijack but I found it quote amusing that CBS flies Dan Rather all the way to Afghanistan for no other reason than to be closer to the story than their rivals. Then on Friday, his first scheduled broadcast, the top story on the news is that George Harrison died. NBC and ABC must still be laughing.
Above all, the media don’t want to be regarded as cheerleaders who march lock-step with Washington or anyone else. Because they regard themselves as value-neutral and impartial, they present issues that some Americans find objectionable. On another level, as the driving force behind the broadcast and print media today are Nielsen ratings and circulation figures–and since scandal sells–the mainstream media maintain a constant drumbeat of “negativism” with the research-driven knowledge that you will tune in, which you do. Last, remember that each media outlet is in fierce competition for viewers/readers and must differentiate its product for maximum market share. CNN knows its breathless viewers tune in for its constantly “breaking” news stories, and thus even comparitively trivial events are given tremendous (negative) play.
As for the predicted “quagmire” in Afghanistan, the media and its coterie of pessimistic experts were certainly wrong
–at least in the short term. (They were also wrong re: the Persian Gulf War and the predictions of thousands of body bags being filled by fallen American GI’s.) As for the long-term prospects of a quagmire developing, only time will tell. We could easily win the war, yet lose the peace.
Sam Stone, I fully agree with you. The media are reporting negative stories about the President, the military, and the country. This is not what people want to hear. Furthermore, our military success shows that the media has also been wrong. No wonder the public is down on them.
tsunamisurfer wrote, “Because they regard themselves as value-neutral and impartial, they present issues that some Americans find objectionable.”
Yes, the media claim to merely be value-neutral, but they aren’t. They’re not neutral between the Ku Klux Klan and the NAACP, or between Planned Parenthood and murderers of abortionists. So, why should they be neutral between the US and terrorists?
IMHO a reflexive anti-American bias has been a part of the mainstream media ever since the Vietnam War. I can recall it beginning around 1967. Today the US is involved in a very popular war, and the media are paying the price for their bias.
The media isn’t there to tell us what we WANT to hear. Sometimes, crap happens. And I for one, am VERY angry with the way the current administration is handling this whole thing.
Face facts-life is not one big happy family. It’s not “morning in America.” It’s not happy days. It’s war, dammit, as so many of us say. If you want happy, go watch Mister Rogers. I’m not trying to be nasty-but with all that’s going on, what is there to report that is positive?
No one said it was ‘happy days’, but on your big balance scale, how would YOU weigh the complete collapse of the Taliban government against, say, a taxi driver being scared off of a road by a U.S. warplane? The guy wasn’t even hurt, for pete’s sake, yet it merited 15 minutes of prime-time coverage?
How about stories on how awesome the new technologies are? The U.S. is fighting a good part of this war using radio-controlled airplanes. This is a major deal, because we don’t have to risk pilots, and we can loiter these things in high-threat environments where you can’t send a manned aircraft. They also cost 3 million, instead of 30 million for a manned plane.
Did you know that only a small percentage of the bombs dropped in Iraq were ‘smart’ bombs, while the rest were plain old iron gravity bombs? Yet in this war, something like 80% of all the ordinance being fired has been ‘smart’ weapons. Why? Partly because these new unmanned drones can illuminate targets and provide coordinates to the bombs. That’s why there have been so few civilian casualties.
There have been a number of amazing successes in this war, but we’re sure not hearing about them.
How about some stories about a possible Hashemite restoration in the Middle East? The Jordanians are probably the most moderate muslims around, and are the descendants of the Hashemites, which were also very progressive and moderate. There have been growing efforts in the U.S. to have the Jordanians take a larger role in Middle-East affairs, leading today to the U.S. suggesting the use of Jordanian troops to police a truce between the Palestinians and Israel. A rise of Jordanian power is one bright spot in this whole mess. But I’ll bet this is the first you’ve heard of it, right? The TV news media doesn’t like this story because there are no interesting soundbites or dramatic images. They’d rather play the shot of the American Taliban lying on his stretcher over, and over, and over, and…
Amen, Guinastasia!!! I thought Sam Stone’s argument was a little out-to-lunch, but then I read december and I have just got to wonder…“First, what planet are these guys living on? And, second, can I get on it?” [E.g., the planet where the media actually fully fulfill their function of being critical watchdogs of the government (and other powers that be!!!) rather than lapdogs!]
For one thing, I have got to ask you, Sam…Where then did you hear about the Al-Quaeda leadership being under attack or Arafat cracking down on Hamas? I personally heard it on NPR. Did you have to go to some alternative (in this case, conservative) news outlet to get it, like most of us liberals do to get the stories that appear in the Project Censored list each year?
It seems to me that you don’t want to hear these stories. You want to hear exclusively these stories. Well, you can live in “la-la good news” land if you want to, but I prefer the real world, thank you very much.
P.S.—Isn’t CNN the network that sent the memo telling reporters that they were not to mention civilian casualties and other nastiness of the war in Afghanistan without reminding the viewers of the larger context of the casualties of the American attack (in case we had forgotten)? If you feel this isn’t being followed, maybe you can phone CNN and “tattle” on these reporters to their superiors!!
