Media coverage of war: when is it good and when is it not?
On the one hand, it may force governments to be more open in acknowledging their mistakes and acting to prevent them in future. It may highlight war crimes (on any side) and bring home the real horror of violence: media-led public opinion may hasten the end of wars or wartime practices most would fine repugnant.
On the other hand: the western media seems to be increasingly turning war into trial by television. Watching the news tonight, I couldn’t help but be struck by the coverage of another accidental hit on a civilian target. These things are terrible and tragic, and should never be dismissed as ‘just one of those wartime things’, but accidents happen in wartime, and innocent people die. If the cause is just, should the media be the arbiter of whether to continue or not?
I’m not advocating a blanket ban on media coverage by any means: but when does media coverage of war stop being a useful check and balance on the conduct of and reasoning behind that war, and when does it become a hindrance to the legitimate goals of that war?
I think that total media coverage is a bad thing. Today I was watching the news and they were showing a piece featuring this civilian woman with pretty horrific leg injuries due to a US bomb that missed its target. Nothing saps support for the war effort like an innocent victim howling in excruciating agony. The media should, to my mind, be adopting a more supportive stance, trying to get people back at home to rally behind the troops. This is rapidly turning into the first ever war where only the enemy are allowed to kill people.
As a reporter, I don’t remember ever agreeing to become a propagandist for the U.S. government.
I support the war effort.
But covering the human consequences of the war and its effect on noncombatants is an absolutely legitimate and neccessary role for the U.S. media. And if any U.S. government figure told me I couldn’t cover something, and couldn’t demonstrate a pressing national security reason why I should squelch the story–i.e.- it may actually compromise an imminent operation and endanger the lives of U.S. soldiers, well, I’d tell him to shove it up his ass.
I’m a reporter, not a mouthpiece.
And if the reality of war undermines “support,” then so be it. Maybe the war shouldn’t be supported, then.
Thats for the viewers to decide. Not for the U.S. Government
The job of the news is to report news, not drum up support for the government. If the government wants propaganda they can make it themselves.
If the war is just and the goals are legitamate, the people of the United States of America, empowered with knowledge and understanding, will choose a government that will continue that war. The goverment answers to the people, and those people ought to have the information to be able to ask the right questions. It isn’t the media that is the arbiter, it is the informed electorate.
And that is how it should be. Anyone that disagrees is free to find a nice facist state to live out their days in.
When a person, faction, or nation is acting morally, openness and honesty serve it well. If you possess the strengh of your conviction there is nothing to hide, IMO.
I think the concern is that people have some false perception of what it means to be “at war.” The media, in doing its job, should be reminding people just what war really is. What happens, however, is that people think the government is not warring properly or some such hogwash, because even though we can’t eliminate mob crime or drug use we should be able to fly into any country and only damage the bricks we want to damage, and only kill the exact people we want to kill. :rolleyes:
I believe that position is best framed by the adjective “ignorance.”
Absolutely. I’m not asking about whether anyone should be restricting freedom of the press, but at a more theoretical level when press coverage hinders something that may be just. Can press coverage ever be a bad thing, in your opinion?
I’m thinking more of examples of, say, badly injured civilians on TV removing support for a war when those examples are a rare exception. How would World War II have fared with today’s level of media saturation?
Just to clarify: I’m not trying to justify governments censoring the media in wartime, but trying to identify if press coverage can ever be a bad thing in its own right.
I’m inclined, as a general principle, to believe the more accurate information the public have, the less chance there is of the political-military process being hijacked for an agenda to which the public has not subscribed.
Thus (using your example, Matt), in my view, reporting on civilian casualties is legitimate in this case, not least because the often stated war aim (literally) is to specifically not target the Afghani people but, instead, ‘terrorists’ and those who harbour terrorists. That’s a fundamental in this so-called ‘Alliance’.
In addition, we’re not the only ones seeing these images. The more innocents that are killed, the more it’s possible to see how some in the Muslim world question whether the target is, indeed, the religion i.e. it fuels a radical perspective.
In terms of the future, I find it very hard to think there would be any Alliance support for ‘mission slippage’ outside of those stated aims and into, for example, Iraq or a wider context within Afghanistan – but that, in part, depends on continued (reasonably) factual reporting informing public opinion.
But there’s always, apparently, an exception to the rule (or Principle, in this case) so perhaps there’s another example because it’s an interesting question ?
Wow! A boatload of post so far and I don’t disagree with a one of them. That doesn’t happen too often around here.
One point-
The problem I have with that line is the ‘just’ part.
‘Just’ to who?
If you don’t know the facts, and you don’t know the consequences and the reasons behind the consequences, how can a person know what is ‘just’?
Hidding the consequences, hiding the reasons for causing those consequences, and not letting people decide for themselves what is ‘just’ doesn’t seem to me to be an open and honest position- you have to know it all to come up with the ‘just’ part.
Nope. My employers are not obligated to be mouthpieces for the U.S. Government, either, in the slightest. I work for a prominent company, and I have never once been pressured to slant a story to accommodate a government official or an advertiser.
Actually, I kind of resent the insinuation. Most reputable news organizations take pride in their independence, and fiercely guard against any kind of outside interference.
In the end, credibility is the biggest asset of any news organization. If it loses that, it’s finished.
The CEO and President of my corporation sent us all a memo, in writing, saying that they expect our journalist to maintain and guard a “reputation for journalistic integrity second to none.”
I plan on doing what I’m told. If anyone else pressures me, I have the boss’s memo to back me up. Never had to invoke it yet, though.
No need to personally resent the insinuation/implication. We don’t know each other and I don’t know your work, or for whom you work. In my experience, elements of the media can and do have their own ownership led agenda independent of the issue at hand, as can their sponsors/advertisers.
That agenda may be exercised in any number of ways: The prominence (or otherwise) given to any given story, the angle reported in relation to that given story, the angle not reported, the depth of reporting, etc., etc., - I guess we both know how the world works. Nothing personal intended.
In response to the OP, yes, media coverage is always a good thing, especially if it’s done with an attempt at fair and balanced journalism. If the participants have nothing to hide except details of strategy, the media will respect that. If either side crosses the line, I’m glad the media is there to protect us from official “truth.”
As for the little sub-debate starting between London_Calling and panzermanpanzerman, I’ve seen both sides of the equation. During my one-and-a-half-year foray into the world of journalism, I found most journalists had a strong sense of integrity, and most of my conversations in the newsroom surrounded the finer points of ethics. Credibility is a newspaper’s first asset.
At the same time, I got a look inside the bowels of Montreal’s one English-language daily, and it was ugly. The Montreal Gazette has long since lost its credibility here, but, due to the concentration of media (The Montreal Star went down quite a few years back), the readers have been left without a choice.
After watching a particularly ugly incident in which the facts of a story were altered to suit an editor’s political bias, and hearing similar stories from other reporters, I left journalism. I decided I didn’t have the energy to fight that battle. So I have a particularly low opinion of most of my country’s newspapers and television news. But I have a lot of respect for my former colleagues who fight that battle and occasionally win.
Regulars here know that I reflexively side with the far right, and harbor deep suspicions about most journalists.
Fact remains, the military is still WAY too stuck in a Viet Nam War era mentality, a mentality that says the media are their enemy, and reporters should be kept in the dark about everything they do.
The bottom line is, the American people NEED to know what’s going on. Even if you approve of military action against Afghanistan, even if you want the Taliban destroyed, even if you think CNN and the New York Times are run by commie peaceniks, how are you ever going to KNOW if our military tactics are working, if there aren’t any reporters on the ground to tell us?
I’d like to know whether our bombing in Afghanistan has had any impact, or whether we’re just making a lot of impotent noise! I’d like to know whether the Taliban has suffered any real casualties, or whether they’re just sitting in caves, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the explosions to stop.
Those are important questions, and we can’t just accept military proclamations of success at face value. If current tactics aren’t working, those tactics have to be changed- and there’s no incentive for generals to change flawed policies if nobody knows they’re failing.
The press can be a royal pain- and they ARE, in general, more liberal than I’d like- but I want them on the scene, telling me what’s really happening.
Now you’ve hit the nail on the head, on the scene reporting what actually happens.
Might I also point out that the same reporters who want unrestricted access to the war in Afghanistan, to dutifully record all Taliban sponsored photo ops complete with the obligatory injured and dead ‘civilians’, to beam that all safely back home, are the same ones who censored the filming of innocent people jumping to their deaths from the WTC, and horrific pictures of the devastation to bodies recovered in the weeks since?
Sounds a little lopsided, doesn’t it? I’d like to see the story told without editorializing by any reporter. Just the facts, ma’am.