By Zach Hosseini
What graced the covers of some of our country’s newspapers this week were the gruesome images of charred and mangled American bodies being pulled through the streets of Fallujah by Iraqis. Outrage, shock and anger were the feelings du jour and rightfully so; what happened to those private contractors was atrocious.
However, after recovering from the shock and awe of seeing those grisly bodies, my interest was two-fold: Was it right for the media to run with those images, and is this war taking on an eerily similar path to another frustratingly impossible war (ahem, Vietnam)?
Now, the question of whether or not to use those images is part of Journalism 101. In my classes we’ve gone over and over what journalism ethics are. (Actually, it’s a trick question– an oxymoron — there are no ethics.)
The next lesson is that coverage/exposure depends on the outlet’s political stance. Let’s take two different newspapers for instance: The New York Post and the Boston Globe.
Last Thursday, April 1, the day after the attacks happened, the Post didn’t run any of the images on their front page. They didn’t even tease or grab the readers with a passion-inciting headline to draw the readers in. The Post, which prints in a tabloid format, relies heavily on what you see on the front page. What was their headline for Thursday? A woman with links to the New York mafia was found dead.
Oh, really, you don’t say? A mob mistress’ body found lifeless — on Long Island, no less?
Of course, the teaser was missing too. Instead, the Post opted for a lead into Yankee Hideki Matsui’s return to Japan.
On the front page of the Globe ran the joyous faces of several Iraqis dancing around the hanging bodies like they were at a Greek wedding. There was a story on the front detailing what happened in the city. Where the story splashed to on the inside, there was more analysis of what happened as well as maps detailing where Fallujah was in regard to Baghdad and so on and so forth. In the Post, the story was on the inside; “buried,” as they say.
The point is that another war is being waged, but this one is without bullets and mortar. This is a war of ink. Tried and true conservative Rupert Murdoch owns the Post. So, connect the dots and see that a paper will reflect the feelings of its owner. The Post would gain nothing from running pictures that would incite anti-war sentiment. Not to say they are war lovers, but Murdoch and Co. are strongly behind Republican George W. Bush and his pursuits in Iraq.
Flip over now to the Globe. They are a subsidiary of the New York Times Company. The Times has been a longtime liberal beacon for this country. They are also making a big time play to bring the American troops back home. The Globe falls in line with their liberal/Democratic agenda. They are painting the war as Bush’s folly. The Times took a very similar stance in the Vietnam war.
Ah, the Vietnam War: America’s number one foreign policy screw up from the 20th century. Pundits were predicting Vietnam II for our war in Afghanistan. They compared the Afghani people’s fighting spirit to that of the North Vietnamese who, through intricate knowledge of their terrain and pure passion, held off America’s advances in spite of heavy casualties. But, for the most part, the pundits were wrong. They underestimated the September 11 factor. People were (are) for tracking down terrorists who caused the greatest American tragedy. With that initial blessing from the majority of Americans, the war in Afghanistan has faded to the back of our collective consciousness.
Flash forward to the present and details are similar: a war with no conceivable end, mounting casualties and the purposeful misleading of the American people by the government. Just recently, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his testimony for the United Nations Security Council that the Iraq war was based on intelligence that appears to have been unreliable. Also, last week, former Bush intelligence advisor Richard Clarke said the country was not only unprepared for terrorism, but in the wake of the swift and across-the-board attacks in Afghanistan, America had jeopardized its efforts in Iraq by fielding an under-manned military. (As a side note, the conservative Boston Herald, buried, and I mean buried, the Clarke story.)
In journalism, the ink wars are struggling mightily for majority opinion in this election year. To some of you, this is obvious; but the assault is on the uninformed. This shouldn’t be a taken as a cheesy “Rock The Vote” ploy, because God knows even that is a campaign by Democrats to capitalize on the liberal nature of college students. Instead, what you should do, what all of us should do, is bear the weight of awareness and take an informed stance.
— Zach Hosseini can be reached at
