http://www.medialens.org/
May 02, 2007
PUTTING VIRGINIA TECH IN PERSPECTIVE
Analytical Value
Two days after a gunman shot dead 32 students and staff at an American
college, Virginia Tech, on April 16, a series of car bombs killed more
than 200 people in Iraq causing one of the highest death tolls since
the war began. In a single attack, 118 people died in a car bomb
explosion in the Shi'ite neighbourhood of Sadriya. Channel 4 news
commented:
“Such ghastly numbers do also put the tragedy in Virginia into some
sort of perspective.” (Snowmail, April 18, 2007)
But in fact this was not the case for most journalists. Indeed a
largely unspoken question hung over media reporting that week: Why did
the deaths of American students and staff matter so much more to the
British media than the deaths of six times as many Iraqi men, women
and children?
Whereas the carnage in Iraq disappeared from media reports the
following day, the killings in Virginia continued to receive
saturation coverage all the way to the end of the week. An April 25
media database search found that the killings in Sadriya had been
mentioned in just 12 British national media press articles, while
Virginia Tech had been mentioned in 391 articles. In the US press,
Sadriya was mentioned in 16 articles - mentions of Virginia Tech,
unsurprisingly, exceeded the capacity of the search engine, recording
“More than 3,000 results.”
Attempting an explanation, BBC radio presenter Jeremy Vine suggested
that the difference with Virginia Tech was that "it happens every day"
in Iraq (The Jeremy Vine Show, BBC Radio 2, April 19, 2007). But this
is surely to reverse cause and effect - the slaughter in Iraq is able
to happen every day +because+ it elicits minimal political or media
concern. Can we even conceive of the level of reaction if Virginia
Tech-scale death tolls occurred in the US or UK every day, as they do
in Iraq? The coverage would be enormous, as would be the media and
political pressure for something to be done to stop the killing.
But in the media reaction to events in Iraq there is barely a hint of
the desperate need for a change of course, for some kind of initiative
to solve the problem. There is almost no serious discussion of how
British and American troops might be replaced by a genuinely
international peacekeeping force, or of the need for peace talks
between the various warring factions in Iraq. One would think such
options were completely impossible. For the press, they are all but
unthinkable. Instead, the sending of an additional 20,000 US troops -
the famous “surge” - was complacently presented as a positive and
hopeful initiative, even though the consequences for the civilian
population were certain to be grim. On February 5, the Daily Mail
reported:
“Unlike previous strikes in Baghdad there will be no areas off limits.
Analysts believe that hand-to-hand combat is inevitable and large
numbers of civilian casualties are expected.” (‘US gears up for Battle
of Baghdad,’ Daily Mail, February 5, 2007)
The frequency of atrocities in Iraq cannot be the cause of media
indifference for the simple reason that the indifference existed from
the very start of the war. On March 28, 2003, 62 civilians were killed
by an American bomb in the al-Shula district of Baghdad - one of the
first mass killings of the war. Newsnight's coverage of the atrocity
on the BBC that night was limited to a 45-second report - less than
one second per death. Unlike Virginia Tech, we did not learn about the
family backgrounds, hopes and dreams of the Iraqi victims - we did not
see their photographs or watch interviews with their bereaved
families.
We asked George Entwistle, then Newsnight editor, why his programme
had only spent 45 seconds on the tragedy. He responded: "As a current
affairs programme we lead on a news story where we think we can add
analytical value; i.e., can we take it on? We didn't feel we could add
anything." (Interview with David Edwards, March 31, 2003)
Something of "analytical value" would of course have been found if the
victims had been British or American.
George Bush said the US was "shocked and saddened" by the killings at
Virginia Tech. He added: "Schools should be places of safety and
sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is
felt in every American classroom and every American
community." (‘President Bush Shocked, Saddened by Shootings at
Virginia Tech,’ April 16, 2007; www.whitehouse.gov/news/
2007/04/20070416-2.html)
Mainstream commentators failed to ask the glaringly obvious question
in response: What about the Iraqi schools and colleges that should be
places of safety and sanctuary and learning?
Last December, a conference in London organised by the Council for
Assisting Refugee Academics, reported that since the war began in
2003, hundreds of Iraqi academics have been kidnapped or murdered -
thousands more have fled for their lives. In January, the Iraqi
Ministry of Education reported that just 30 per cent of Iraq’s 3.5
million school-aged children were attending classes. Earlier this
month, a survey by the Iraqi Ministry of Health found that about 70%
of primary school students in a Baghdad neighbourhood were suffering
symptoms of trauma-related stress such as bed-wetting or stuttering.
(Dirk Adriaensens, ‘Iraq’s education system on the verge of collapse,’
The Brussells Tribunal, April 18, 2007; www.brusselstribunal.org/
The Cost Of Doing Business
The reality of the Western attitude to Iraqi civilian casualties was
exposed by a military investigation published last summer into the
November 2005 massacre of 24 civilians, among them 11 women and
children, in Haditha, western Iraq. The report was never made public
because of ongoing criminal investigations of three Marines on murder
allegations and four officers who allegedly failed to look into the
case.
Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell's 104-page report on Haditha, obtained by
the Washington Post last month, found that officers may have
deliberately ignored reports of the civilian deaths to protect
themselves and their units from blame. Bargewell commented on the
culture of killing:
"Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this
investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are
not as important as US lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing
business, and that the Marines need to get 'the job done' no matter
what it takes. These comments had the potential to desensitize the
Marines to concern for the Iraqi populace and portray them all as the
enemy even if they are noncombatants.” (Josh White, ‘Report On Haditha
Condemns Marines; Signs of Misconduct Were Ignored, U.S. General
Says,’ Washington Post, April 21, 2007)
Bargewell added:
"All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in
significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result
of insurgent tactics."
Camilo Mejia, a US infantry veteran who served briefly in the Haditha
area in 2003 commented on the Haditha massacre: "I don't doubt for one
moment that these things happened. They are widespread. This is the
norm. These are not the exceptions." (Paul Harris, Peter Beaumont and
Mohammed al-Ubeidy, ’US confronts brutal culture among its finest
sons,’ The Observer, June 4, 2006)
Tragically, the military indifference to Iraqi civilian suffering is
reflected in the media. The latest revelations from the Bargewell
report have so far received two mentions in major US newspapers. The
truth is not allowed to interfere with the preferred view expressed by
Diana West in the Washington Times in January. West noted that
insurgents in Baghdad's Haifa Street “keep returning to fire at
American and Iraqi troops from positions in high-rise buildings”. She
commented:
“Is it just me, or does anyone ever wonder why, if pacifying Baghdad
is so darn vital, those buildings are still standing?
“It is the great irony of our time that even as our stone-age enemies
seek to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, we in the
postmodern West seek to inflict none.” (West, ‘In limbo on Iraq; Both
Bush and Democrats are wrong,’ Washington Times, January 26, 2007)
The Bargewell revelations have received no mentions at all in the
British press - a media that also prefers to talk in terms of US-UK
’good intentions’, ‘mistakes‘ and ‘blunders‘. Thus Max Hastings in the
Guardian on Iraq:
“Rationally, we know that Bush and Blair want virtuous things for the
country: democracy and personal freedom. Yet so incompetent has been
the fulfilment of their policies on the ground that the leaders of
Britain and the US now possess no more credible mandate than that of
Iraq's local mass murderers.” (Max Hastings, ‘Bush and Blair have
forfeited the moral authority to hang Saddam,’ The Guardian, November
6, 2006)
Thus Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer:
“The mistake that mattered most was one colossal strategic blunder.
George Bush waged a war without having an effective plan for winning
the peace.” (Rawnsley, ‘The ideals worth rescuing from the deserts of
Iraq,’ The Observer, May 28, 2006)
Mistakes and blunders are fine topics for discussion -
institutionalised criminality and brutality are not. Focusing on the
latter promotes attempts to fundamentally alter the status quo. But
the key task of elite journalism is to present the way things are as
being pretty much how they ought to be. Radical change and public
interference are not at all in the interests of a highly privileged
media arm of corporate domination.
http://www.medialens.org/
May 02, 2007
PUTTING VIRGINIA TECH IN PERSPECTIVE
Analytical Value
Two days after a gunman shot dead 32 students and staff at an American
college, Virginia Tech, on April 16, a series of car bombs killed more
than 200 people in Iraq causing one of the highest death tolls since
the war began. In a single attack, 118 people died in a car bomb
explosion in the Shi'ite neighbourhood of Sadriya. Channel 4 news
commented:
“Such ghastly numbers do also put the tragedy in Virginia into some
sort of perspective.” (Snowmail, April 18, 2007)
But in fact this was not the case for most journalists. Indeed a
largely unspoken question hung over media reporting that week: Why did
the deaths of American students and staff matter so much more to the
British media than the deaths of six times as many Iraqi men, women
and children?
Whereas the carnage in Iraq disappeared from media reports the
following day, the killings in Virginia continued to receive
saturation coverage all the way to the end of the week. An April 25
media database search found that the killings in Sadriya had been
mentioned in just 12 British national media press articles, while
Virginia Tech had been mentioned in 391 articles. In the US press,
Sadriya was mentioned in 16 articles - mentions of Virginia Tech,
unsurprisingly, exceeded the capacity of the search engine, recording
“More than 3,000 results.”
Attempting an explanation, BBC radio presenter Jeremy Vine suggested
that the difference with Virginia Tech was that "it happens every day"
in Iraq (The Jeremy Vine Show, BBC Radio 2, April 19, 2007). But this
is surely to reverse cause and effect - the slaughter in Iraq is able
to happen every day +because+ it elicits minimal political or media
concern. Can we even conceive of the level of reaction if Virginia
Tech-scale death tolls occurred in the US or UK every day, as they do
in Iraq? The coverage would be enormous, as would be the media and
political pressure for something to be done to stop the killing.
But in the media reaction to events in Iraq there is barely a hint of
the desperate need for a change of course, for some kind of initiative
to solve the problem. There is almost no serious discussion of how
British and American troops might be replaced by a genuinely
international peacekeeping force, or of the need for peace talks
between the various warring factions in Iraq. One would think such
options were completely impossible. For the press, they are all but
unthinkable. Instead, the sending of an additional 20,000 US troops -
the famous “surge” - was complacently presented as a positive and
hopeful initiative, even though the consequences for the civilian
population were certain to be grim. On February 5, the Daily Mail
reported:
“Unlike previous strikes in Baghdad there will be no areas off limits.
Analysts believe that hand-to-hand combat is inevitable and large
numbers of civilian casualties are expected.” (‘US gears up for Battle
of Baghdad,’ Daily Mail, February 5, 2007)
The frequency of atrocities in Iraq cannot be the cause of media
indifference for the simple reason that the indifference existed from
the very start of the war. On March 28, 2003, 62 civilians were killed
by an American bomb in the al-Shula district of Baghdad - one of the
first mass killings of the war. Newsnight's coverage of the atrocity
on the BBC that night was limited to a 45-second report - less than
one second per death. Unlike Virginia Tech, we did not learn about the
family backgrounds, hopes and dreams of the Iraqi victims - we did not
see their photographs or watch interviews with their bereaved
families.
We asked George Entwistle, then Newsnight editor, why his programme
had only spent 45 seconds on the tragedy. He responded: "As a current
affairs programme we lead on a news story where we think we can add
analytical value; i.e., can we take it on? We didn't feel we could add
anything." (Interview with David Edwards, March 31, 2003)
Something of "analytical value" would of course have been found if the
victims had been British or American.
George Bush said the US was "shocked and saddened" by the killings at
Virginia Tech. He added: "Schools should be places of safety and
sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is
felt in every American classroom and every American
community." (‘President Bush Shocked, Saddened by Shootings at
Virginia Tech,’ April 16, 2007; www.whitehouse.gov/news/
2007/04/20070416-2.html)
Mainstream commentators failed to ask the glaringly obvious question
in response: What about the Iraqi schools and colleges that should be
places of safety and sanctuary and learning?
Last December, a conference in London organised by the Council for
Assisting Refugee Academics, reported that since the war began in
2003, hundreds of Iraqi academics have been kidnapped or murdered -
thousands more have fled for their lives. In January, the Iraqi
Ministry of Education reported that just 30 per cent of Iraq’s 3.5
million school-aged children were attending classes. Earlier this
month, a survey by the Iraqi Ministry of Health found that about 70%
of primary school students in a Baghdad neighbourhood were suffering
symptoms of trauma-related stress such as bed-wetting or stuttering.
(Dirk Adriaensens, ‘Iraq’s education system on the verge of collapse,’
The Brussells Tribunal, April 18, 2007; www.brusselstribunal.org/
The Cost Of Doing Business
The reality of the Western attitude to Iraqi civilian casualties was
exposed by a military investigation published last summer into the
November 2005 massacre of 24 civilians, among them 11 women and
children, in Haditha, western Iraq. The report was never made public
because of ongoing criminal investigations of three Marines on murder
allegations and four officers who allegedly failed to look into the
case.
Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell's 104-page report on Haditha, obtained by
the Washington Post last month, found that officers may have
deliberately ignored reports of the civilian deaths to protect
themselves and their units from blame. Bargewell commented on the
culture of killing:
"Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this
investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are
not as important as US lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing
business, and that the Marines need to get 'the job done' no matter
what it takes. These comments had the potential to desensitize the
Marines to concern for the Iraqi populace and portray them all as the
enemy even if they are noncombatants.” (Josh White, ‘Report On Haditha
Condemns Marines; Signs of Misconduct Were Ignored, U.S. General
Says,’ Washington Post, April 21, 2007)
Bargewell added:
"All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in
significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result
of insurgent tactics."
Camilo Mejia, a US infantry veteran who served briefly in the Haditha
area in 2003 commented on the Haditha massacre: "I don't doubt for one
moment that these things happened. They are widespread. This is the
norm. These are not the exceptions." (Paul Harris, Peter Beaumont and
Mohammed al-Ubeidy, ’US confronts brutal culture among its finest
sons,’ The Observer, June 4, 2006)
Tragically, the military indifference to Iraqi civilian suffering is
reflected in the media. The latest revelations from the Bargewell
report have so far received two mentions in major US newspapers. The
truth is not allowed to interfere with the preferred view expressed by
Diana West in the Washington Times in January. West noted that
insurgents in Baghdad's Haifa Street “keep returning to fire at
American and Iraqi troops from positions in high-rise buildings”. She
commented:
“Is it just me, or does anyone ever wonder why, if pacifying Baghdad
is so darn vital, those buildings are still standing?
“It is the great irony of our time that even as our stone-age enemies
seek to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, we in the
postmodern West seek to inflict none.” (West, ‘In limbo on Iraq; Both
Bush and Democrats are wrong,’ Washington Times, January 26, 2007)
The Bargewell revelations have received no mentions at all in the
British press - a media that also prefers to talk in terms of US-UK
’good intentions’, ‘mistakes‘ and ‘blunders‘. Thus Max Hastings in the
Guardian on Iraq:
“Rationally, we know that Bush and Blair want virtuous things for the
country: democracy and personal freedom. Yet so incompetent has been
the fulfilment of their policies on the ground that the leaders of
Britain and the US now possess no more credible mandate than that of
Iraq's local mass murderers.” (Max Hastings, ‘Bush and Blair have
forfeited the moral authority to hang Saddam,’ The Guardian, November
6, 2006)
Thus Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer:
“The mistake that mattered most was one colossal strategic blunder.
George Bush waged a war without having an effective plan for winning
the peace.” (Rawnsley, ‘The ideals worth rescuing from the deserts of
Iraq,’ The Observer, May 28, 2006)
Mistakes and blunders are fine topics for discussion -
institutionalised criminality and brutality are not. Focusing on the
latter promotes attempts to fundamentally alter the status quo. But
the key task of elite journalism is to present the way things are as
being pretty much how they ought to be. Radical change and public
interference are not at all in the interests of a highly privileged
media arm of corporate domination.
http://www.medialens.org/
No comments:
Post a Comment